Kicks, Banks, Caroms and Combos

Prepare to be Glued to TV

2012-01-09T18:05:00.000-08:00

It feels like Christmas again!

Ten shiny new Accu-Stats videos were waiting for me at my front door today - yay!!!

For those of you who don't know, they're running an "Any 10 for $100" sale right now (which is about 50% off)... so it's a good time to stock up on the titles in your wishlist. Or even some that weren't! I took the occasion to add a few videos covering games I'm not currently playing like 3-Cushion and One-Pocket so I can start to learn those a bit as well.

I almost feel like calling in sick for league tonight! LOL!

Happy Holidays, and yes I'm still alive

2011-12-30T17:12:00.000-08:00

I got a text from a friend today:

dude did you give up your blog or what?

Point taken.

No, I haven't given up my blog... just been dealing with a lot of sh!t happens outside of pool and busily trodding along on my ~~treadmill~~ hamster wheel trying to keep up with things.

I think someone turned up the speed on the treadmill a couple of months ago when I wasn't looking!

It hasn't been any one "thing"... but a whole raft of numerous "things" over the last several months. Most weren't horribly serious in the overall scheme of life, but required my attention and ate up time and resources nonetheless.

I did have one issue that rose to the level of "drop everything and give this 100% of your attention" but I'm happy to say, while still a work in progress, I think we're mostly out of the woods on that one.

I felt particularly bad about missing PoolSynergy earlier this month. I'd have to go back to verify, but I think that was the first one I missed in a looong time. Even in the months where I only managed to make a single blog post, that post was typically the PoolSynergy post.

So what happened this month? Too busy with the holidays?

Nope. Not a good enough excuse, unless I'm up until 3 or 4 in the morning doing something else... because I've stayed up that late to finish off PoolSynergy before.

Earlier this month I ran into something else that I simply couldn't overcome.

I ran into... a sagebrush branch.

It wasn't my finest moment. I was out hiking after dark and saw something at the base of some sagebrush. Curious, I bent over to pick it up. I had a strong flashlight, and the object was well illuminated.

Turns out, the branches of the bush were not so well illuminated.

One of those not-so-well-illuminated branches found its way into my open and unaware right eye. Luckily, the branch didn't completely penetrate the cornea, but it gave me a pretty nasty corneal abrasion that hurt like $%^&(*& and left me blind in that eye.

But wait, there's more... I got LASIK earlier this year, remember? They did what's called monovision, which means one eye is corrected for distance and the other is corrected for reading. That was the goal, anyway. Turns out, neither eye got corrected as well is it was supposed to (follow up surgery still pending, but that's yet another story).

To cut to the chase here, the right eye is my distance eye. It's also the eye that got somewhat closer to plan with my initial LASIK procedure. Losing my right eye made me effectively blind for a few days. Scary!

Luckily, it seems like it's healed fairly well in the last couple of weeks and I can see about as well as I could prior to the incident. I've got another eye doctor follow up next week, so we'll see.

Anyway, onward and upward into the next year!

I have two partially completed blog entries that are "on hold" for various reasons beyond my control. I should be able to publish those fairly soon once the holds clear.

I'm heading in a couple new directions with my pool game in the upcoming year, and I'm sure that will give me plenty to write about as well.

As I close... I leave you with some sage advice: protect your eyes!

PoolSynergy: Thankfulness

2011-11-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the November edition of:

PoolSynergy is a blog carnival where several pool bloggers collaborate each month to write about a common topic.

This month is hosted by Melinda AkaTrigger, and her chosen topic is "Thankfulness" which is certainly appropriate since the United States has a holiday towards the end of the month called Thanksgiving. While it seems many people associate Thanksgiving with football and food (often the overindulgence thereof), the holiday is really intended to be a time to reflect and "give thanks" for the many blessings in our lives.

I have to say this was one of the tougher PoolSynergy topics for me... not because I lack appreciation, but more because I had a hard time coming up with something that I felt might be halfway interesting and pool-related without sounding corny or something.

Sure, I'm thankful for my health... my family... the roof over my head... the fact that I'm able to support my family and so on - and I'm very aware that many people struggle with some or all of the above. I wanted to dig a bit deeper and come up with something that might be perhaps a little more unique. Something that I feel might give me a bit of an edge in pool and something and isn't related to the ability (or lack of ability) to pony up some $$ for better equipment or instruction or table time or whatever.

For me, it's a much higher than average level of Attention to Detail. What does this mean? Generally, I tend notice a lot more things in the environment around me than the Average Joe (or Josephine). Sometimes it's a little awkward, because I notice things that I shouldn't (or wish I didn't)... but I usually consider it a pretty useful superpower. How can it be awkward or annoying? Well, for instance, it sometimes turns me into a freakishly overactive proofreader. If I'm reading an article or book that contains a lot of errors, for example, the errors jump out at me so much that they become distracting and detract from the informational content of the article.

It's definitely a sub-conscious activity - I recall noticing some misspelled words in a marketing video a few years ago. I was amongst a few hundred people viewing the video as part of a "preview session" prior to a major trade show. Portions of the video had numerous words popping on and off the screen in rapid-fire fashion, rotating, moving, fading in and out and so on to a pounding dance beat. The individual words weren't really meant to be read... certainly not all of them. It was just an effect kind of thing.

Unfortunately, my spider-sense kicked in, and I felt compelled to go up to the VP of Marketing after the session to tell him that I was pretty sure there were a couple of misspelled words in the video. I was trying to be helpful, thinking there might be time to make corrections before showing the video at such an important show. The VP asked me which words were misspelled and the odd thing was, I couldn't tell him! I only knew that my brain 'triggered' on at least two. He rolled his eyes a bit and gave me a "this video was professionally developed and proofed by dozens of people, I'm sure you're mistaken" line. I persisted, and convinced him to play the video again in slow motion. I was right, two misspelled words.

Other things tend to jump out at me as well - something out of place in a room, or details about someone's clothing, or whatever. Details in general. And that's where the "thankfulness" comes in. Partly because some of this is undoubtedly innate ability, but also because I had a father that drilled it into me as a child. My father was a policeman you see - and as you might guess, attention to detail is huge with policemen. Failing to notice a weapon tucked under a shirt or someone laying down in the back seat of a car could mean the difference between life and death... or failing to notice something ever-so-slightly out of place at a crime scene could mean the difference between getting a conviction or watching someone walk.

So it turns out attention to detail was my father's life. He made it his mission to make it a part of my life as well. I didn't enjoy it at the time, but I now realize it's probably one of the best gifts he gave me.

His method was simple but effective: he'd randomly pepper me with odd questions about things going on around us - while driving, he'd ask questions about things we passed after we passed them... signs, for example - "what elevation are we at?" "how many miles is it to Reno?" "what mile marker did we just pass?" In other settings, just about anything else was fair game - "what color socks did that lady have?" "what was the name on our waitress' name tag?" and so on.

He had the advantage, of course, because he knew when he was going to ask a question and could actively look for something obscure to ask me. That drove me crazy! At first, I hardly ever got an answer right, and he'd act as if I was some sort of failure... but over time, the competitive part of me took on the challenge. I began to soak up minute details of pretty much everything around us, and even discovered patterns in his questions... tipping the advantage in my direction by being able to anticipate what he was going to ask before he even asked it. I eventually got to the point that he could rarely stump me.

So how does this relate to pool?

I believe it gives me an edge when "processing" table layouts. I tend to see things that others miss, even players with a lot more experience (remember I'm an average hack who really hasn't been playing all that long, relatively speaking). Similar to the way misspelled words jump out at me... so do angles, wired combinations, caroms, billiards and the like. Just last week an experienced player painstakingly studied the table and executed a safety exactly as he intended to. It was a good safety - I'm fairly sure it would have stumped most opponents, but I noticed something obscure with the table layout during a previous turn at the table that turned out to be the key to turning his safety into a very quick and easy run out for me. I knew the answer to his safety before he even conceived and executed it! He was dumbfounded with the speed of my response.

So... as muscle memory can be built through practice and repetition, so can perception and other related activities... and I'm thankful that I had a father who took the time to develop that within me (although I hated it at the time).

Be sure to check out all of this month's PoolSynergy articles as well!

PoolSynergy: Volume 24 - When Sharks Attack!

2011-10-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

Hi and welcome to Volume 24 of PoolSynergy!

With this issue of PoolSynergy, two full years of monthly article collections are now in the archives! Believe it or not, it was two full years ago when John Biddle and other billiard blog pioneers joined forces to kick off the inaugural issue of PoolSynergy with the topic of Strategy.

Since that initial volume, the online pool community has been blessed with a steady stream of monthly topics from a wide variety of contributors - over thirty people have written at one time or another!

As a relative newcomer, I didn't join the fray until about a year ago with the 11th edition: GEAR: What's in Your Case and Why? hosted by Samm Diep (now Samm Vidal Claramunt). Since then, I've done my best to contribute as often as possible. I don't think I succeeded in contributing every month, but came close!

This month, I hoped to stir up a feeding frenzy with the topic of "When Sharks Attack" but alas, many of the regular PoolSynergy contributors sent along their regrets as they were otherwise engaged fending off tsunamis, infestations, and other natural disasters in real life.

John Biddle has been with PoolSynergy since the beginning... in fact he was the beginning, pulling the initial batch of writers together and hosting the Strategy topic I mentioned above. John takes what I imagine will be considered a bit of a contrarian view that sharking is over-hyped and over-rated.

Melinda (AkaTrigger) has been with PoolSynergy from the beginning as well. She's one of the more prolific bloggers, and managed to pull together her article somewhere between touring pool halls of Europe and winning the Texas State ACS title. Melinda covers many aspects of sharking - from tactics admitted by a sharker, to sharking among the pros, to her own confession of sharking in the past (say it isn't so!!). Read all about it in her article When Sharks Attack.

Michael Reddick adds his wisdom on the subject with some examples as well as some advice on how to deal with such situations when they arise. Michael's Angle of Reflection blog took top honors this year from Billards Digest Magazine. Apparently feeling the need to prove he can perform as well as he can write, Michael also recently qualified for this year's US Amateur Championship. Check out Michael's thoughts here: Shark Attack.

I play cleanup with some of my thoughts, observations, and tips on the subject as well.

PoolSynergy: When Sharks Attack

2011-10-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the October edition of:

PoolSynergy is a blog carnival where several pool bloggers collaborate each month to write about a common topic.

This month I'm your humble host, and I asked fellow contributors to discuss their thoughts, experiences, and/or advice on what is known in the world of billiards as 'sharking'.

Sharking, in a nutshell, covers a wide range of antics that may be employed to distract an opponent while they're shooting. Sometimes it's visual, such as motion in the line of sight or at the edge of the shooter's peripheral vision... sometimes it's audible, such as a well-timed comment or other sound such as a cough... and sometimes it's mental, such as a comment that's intended to provoke thought well after it's originally made (presumably while shooting).

Of course not every comment, cough, or movement is or should be considered to be sharking. This is an important point, and please take it on board. I've seen more than one person get so hung up on this kind of thing that they drive themselves batty just thinking they're being intentionally sharked when they're not. Pool halls and bars tend to be crowded, noisy, distracting places and you need to be able to cope with that or you'll find yourself limited as to how far you can progress in the sport.

The best pool players have honed their concentration skills to the point that they can tune just about anything out. Take, for example, this video of Efren playing in a noisy, crowded bar:

Or how about this one where Earl runs out while there's still commotion going on after a large bucket full of water fell from the ceiling into the stands:

I guess my overall initial point is that "stuff happens" and the better you can tune it out, the better off you'll be whether the stuff happening is being done to intentionally distract you or not.

On the other hand, I'm convinced that there are players out there with serious ethical and sportsmanship issues who feel somewhere deep inside that they can't beat you without resorting to sharking in some form or another. These are the folks that you need to arm yourself against... while still being mindful that the actions may indeed be innocent.

So what to do? It's a good question, and in my opinion there's no single 'right' answer that covers every situation.

One of the more common distractions I've seen is idle chatting, and more importantly trying to engage you in conversation while you're at the table. Seems innocent enough - after all, pool is often considered a social sport as it's usually done in a (supposedly) social setting such as a bar or pool hall. Intentional or not? It's tough to tell, and I'd tend to say it's usually unintentional... but I know that's not always the case. The best way to deal with this is to simply tune them out if you can. Simply do not allow them to engage you in conversation! Do not talk back to them! Ignore them and concentrate on your shooting.

Another distraction I've seen is the 'table hugger'... the guy who's up at the table chalking his cue or whatever while you're trying to shoot. Again, sometimes this is simply someone with a nervous habit or otherwise clueless about what he's doing. If he's truly clueless, asking him politely to step away from the table or out of your line of sight should do the trick.

Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a little more persuasion to deal with the situation. You might have to be a little firmer with your requests in order to get through. Do your best to keep your cool though! If you let it get to you, chances are it's having an increasing effect on your concentration (and game).

Another option that I've tried with known repeat offenders is to simply mirror them. Whatever they do at the table when you're shooting, do it right back when they're shooting. Don't exaggerate or "one up" them... just match them as closely as you possibly can - and do it in a casual manner too, rather that making a weird "see, I can do this too" expression on your face or something. I've found that one of two things will happen when you do this: (1) they'll say something to you about you doing it, which of course opens up a dialog in which you can politely request that they in turn refrain from doing the same thing... or (2) their sharky actions while you're at the table will magically 'disappear' without comment (and, of course, you should then do the same).

PoolSynergy: My Practice Principles

2011-09-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the September edition of:

PoolSynergy is a blog carnival where several pool bloggers collaborate each month to write about a common topic.

This month's topic, brought to you by the father of PoolSynergy John Biddle, is Practice: What Works For You.

This topic made me reflect on a few things: (a) do I practice? (b) does anything actually work for me? (c) is it worth writing about? I got a hat trick of yes's with the answers, but realized that my practice varies so much that I'd be better off writing about the underlying principles guiding my practice sessions rather than going in depth about any specific drills I do. Up until this point I haven't had a written list of these principles, but it didn't take long to pound out a quick dozen of them.

Schedule Your Practice

Regular practice is a great habit to be in, and the best way to develop and stick to this habit is to have set days and times during the week set aside for practice. Life happens, of course, and you have to be flexible... but don't flex too much! You'll likely find that you can keep on your schedule if it's realistic in the first place and you make it a priority in your life. It doesn't have to be the top priority (and probably shouldn't be), but it needs to be a genuine priority. Assuming you want to improve, that is. If you're satisfied with the level of suckage in your game, that's perfectly alright with me.

Keep a Record

The amount of detail will vary from person to person, but it's generally a good idea to keep track of what you're doing during your practice sessions. I know some people who like to record things in excruciating detail, and I know people who don't record anything at all. Since this post is about what works for me, I'll say that I fall somewhere near the middle of the two extremes. I keep general notes of what I'm practicing and what I want to practice in the near future. I track some types of drills in more detail so I can get an idea of progress I'm making, but I intentionally avoid overdoing it. My personal feeling is that I'm there to practice, not administrate. The paperwork shouldn't be so onerous that it's a distraction.

Mix it Up

Variety is the spice of life. Yes, you're going to be concentrating on certain things from time to time, and that's fine... but I always prefer to mix it up a bit to keep it interesting and also to exercise different parts of your game in a balanced manner.

Look Ahead in Your Calendar

When planning out my practice sessions, I generally look two or three months ahead on the calendar to help decide what I should be working on. If I know there's a 10-ball tournament coming up in a couple of months I'll make a point of spending some time on 10-ball breaks since that's not something I do on a regular basis, for example.

Work On Your Weaknesses

We all have them, some worse than others. And I've found that sometimes weaknesses come, go, and come back again! Shooting a ball down the rail is a common weakness for many newer players, for example. Or long straight in shots. Or draw. Be honest with yourself on these - identify and eliminate them! From time to time, ask others what they perceive your weaknesses to be, and listen with an open mind. Their answers might uncover something you haven't even considered!

Work On Things You Don't Like

Don't like shooting a cue ball that's close or frozen to the rail? Practice it! Don't like bridging over other balls? Practice it! Don't like using the mechanical bridge? Practice it! These are all common weaknesses in the average player's game that tend to be game changers - one way or the other. Avoiding these things in practice simply because you don't like doing them is a common (and deadly) mistake.

Work On Important Aspects of the Game

Most people practice shot making... and that's important of course, but beyond that there are some extremely important aspects of the game that often do not get the attention they deserve. Break shots, for example are huge and yet rarely get the attention they deserve (amongst amateurs, at least). I remember watching Shane Van Boening work his way through four or five straight racks in a local 9-ball tournament when a fellow railbird remarked "hell, he's getting really easy table layouts... even I could run the table with layouts like that" and yeah, that's exactly the point. He was getting good layouts because he's invested hundreds or thousands of hours on his break. A good break can keep you at the table more often than not... it can occasionally win the game outright for you... and it makes subsequent run outs much easier as well. Safeties are another aspect of the game that usually don't get the attention they deserve.

Use Proven Practice Methods and Drills

No need to reinvent the wheel - look to others for practice methods that might fill your needs. There are some incredibly effective drills floating around out there in books, videos, and other sources - take advantage of them! Many pool books have chapters or sections dedicated to practice drills. At least one book is completely dedicated to practice: Phil Cappelle's Practicing Pool. You'll find that some of the 'tried and true' practice drills are incredibly effective at working on common weaknesses... probably more so than the majority of things you'd come up with on your own.

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

Build that muscle memory! Studies have shown that practicing the same thing over and over again prompts biological changes that actually improve the body's ability to perform that action. It's more than just a matter of "the more you practice, the better you get"... you're actually programming your body to get better at the task. Therefore, it makes sense to dedicate at least a portion of your practice to highly repetitive tasks such as shooting the same exact shot over and over again. Mark the initial locations of the cue ball and object ball(s) so you can quickly set them up again and shoot 25 of them. Or 50. Or even 100.

Practice Under Realistic Game Conditions

Do you have some sort of fancy collared shirt from a sponsor that you only wear in tournaments? Wear it during practice at least a few times to make sure you're used to it and it doesn't cause any unforeseen problems. Sometimes the oddest things can cause a distraction, such as the way a shirt sleeve catches your elbow mid-stroke. Wear the shoes you normally compete in. Use the equipment you normally use (including chalk holders, etc).

Practice Alone

I've noticed many people get together with others and make it a bit of a social event to 'practice' and sure, there's something to be said for that... but I don't personally think that's the best way to practice. It generally turns into a string of casual games mixed in with a lot of chatting and drinking, etc. It's all good, of course, and probably helpful to some extent... but keep in mind it's not optimal practice. In my opinion, you really need to be alone in order to tune in and get the most out of your practice sessions. If you've got a friend or partner who really wants to be involved, put them to work setting up repetitious shots or something so they enhance your practice experience rather than distract from it. If your partner is also a pool player, rotate back and forth with them between shooting and setting.

Something is Better than Nothing

Yeah, I get it... most people lead busy lives and maybe they don't have a solid two hours to practice at a given time on a given day. Fine, at least try to squeeze in 10-15 minutes on your favorite drill or simply run a couple of racks or something. I often run a rack while commercials are on TV or I'm waiting for a delicious gourmet meal to finish in the microwave. Don't have a pool table at home? Fine. Practice your stroke and bridges on the kitchen table. It's not perfect, but at least it's something.

Happy practicing!

Be sure to check out all of the other great PoolSynergy articles posted here.

Chalk Up Another Trial

2011-08-21T00:23:00.000-07:00

My daughter had a hair appointment today - way up on the other side of town at Platinum Hair Studio. Great place, friends with the owner, blah, blah... but it is a long drive! She had a ride up there, but the deal was I'd go pick her up.

No problem.

Let's see... between here and there happens to be The Riviera. At The Riviera happens to be the 2011 APA Team Nationals. At the 2011 APA Team Nationals happens to be several pool vendors selling cool pool gear.

Yes!!! I'll be happy to head up that way to pick her up!

Parking at The Riv was seriously weird because what used to be the entrance to the self park garage at The Riviera is now a wall. WTF? I've been parking there for years! It's gotten so automatic that I damn near turned and ran into the new wall! I'm halfway ashamed to say that I had to circle the building twice just to figure out what was going on and how to get in! The old exit is now the entrance. The old entrance is now a wall. The new exit is around the corner from the old entrance (the new wall). Whatever.

This is the second time in less than a week that my feeble brain has been messed with like this. Earlier in the week I had APA 8-ball league playoff matches at Blue Hawk Tavern. It's never been a 'home bar' for me, but I've had numerous matches there so it's a very familiar place. Got there Wednesday night early to warm up... reached down to get balls out of the table... and saw nothing but the side of the table. WTF? They turned the tables 180 degrees around!!

I thought to myself: OK, I guess they decided they preferred us breaking towards the stained glass windows over launching cue balls into the people space of the bar below (which made me recall an incident when yours truly hit a Blue Hawk waitress in the ankle with a cue ball last year). So it made sense... kind of. I reached for balls on the wrong side of the table several times that night, but it made sense.

But here's the kicker - the very next night, they turned the tables around again!!! Oy! And this time they (whomever 'they' are) were clearly conflicted. The tables were physically rotated 180 degrees back to the original direction they had been for years. But... it appeared that they still wanted us to break towards the stained glass windows, because they moved the spot to the head of the table - haha! Whatever. Anyone with a quarter of a brain would know that the simple act of moving the spot sticker is not going to change where we break on a ball return type table. Fail.

But it didn't fail to get me reaching down on the wrong side of the table again after finally getting myself adapted to the other orientation the previous night - LOL!

Their mind games didn't work. I won and we won both nights... taking first place in the division Wednesday night and third place in Thursday night's division.

Anyway, back to something more important - cool pool vendors at The Riv. My list was simple (but rarely stays that way). Joint protectors for my shiny new Venom VX Blackbelt Jump Cue was the #1 priority. If I happened to see it, I figured I'd grab a copy of the new Mastering the Jump Shot DVD that Bebob Publishing sent me an email about a few days ago. That was it. Honest!

The joint protectors were easy. I dropped by the Predator booth with sad puppy dog eyes and bam they hooked me up with freebie leftover Predator Air joint protectors. Check.

No luck with the DVD. Didn't see it at any of the general cue stuff peddlers like Pooldawg, Omega, Mueller... and didn't see a Bebob booth. OK, struck out on the DVD.

Then I found myself face-to-face with Kamui's John Bertone, who had set up a somewhat make-shift looking shop at the far corner of Lucasi's booth. Below the Kamui banner, he was armed with a lone display stand loaded with product and brochures and his iPad 2 point-of-sale device. Oh, and he was wearing an official looking Kamui shirt.

I thought to myself that I'd be doing the world an injustice if I didn't give him crap about the price of their chalk. But then I decided to ask if he had a way to let me compare the Kamui Black Soft tip (which I'm using) to the Black Super Soft. I wanted to get the more important question (to me) out of the way first. Unfortunately, he didn't have any cues or shafts set up with the different tips like I hoped he might.

So I gave him crap about the price of their chalk... and he took it in stride (gee, maybe he's heard that one before?) He asked me to get my cue out of the case and proceeded to give it the Gator Grip treatment. Then, he chalked it up and told me to go run a rack of balls without any more chalking.

And so I did. I actually ran two racks.

I had great cue ball control throughout the shooting, all the way to the end. Not a single miscue. In fact, I got more than table length of draw on the very last shot of those two racks. Looking at my tip, there was still chalk on it after running two full racks! And with me, that's more than 30 shots - ha! Actually, I only missed a couple shots out of the two racks, and I believe I can attribute that to having better control over the cue ball which gave me more confidence... which, well you know.

You probably know where this is headed, don't you?

Yeah, I ended up getting some Kamui chalk. I still don't like the price, but I'll give it a try for awhile. It's definitely different than any chalk I've used before, and I believe I've tried all of the others at one time or another.

I'll keep you posted!

Oh, and now for an exclusive KBCNC newsflash: If you want the ebony version of the Kamui Gator Grip, get one now from whatever source you can find. Supposedly the price of ebony has gone up dramatically, so I'm guessing Kamui will either raise the price or drop the item altogether. John was only selling the boxwood version. It looks like some online suppliers still have them in stock at this point.

PoolSynergy: 10 Ways to Quiet the Mind

2011-08-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the August edition of:

PoolSynergy is a blog carnival where several pool bloggers collaborate each month to write about a common topic.

This month's topic, brought to you by Samm Vidal Claramunt (aka Samm Diep), is 10 Things. Umm, ten of what things you ask? Well, ten of anything pool related said Samm - so I chose to write about 10 Ways to Quiet the Mind... something I've personally been focusing on lately.

If you're not familiar with the term, perhaps you've heard similar terms such as "Zen State" or "Inner Peace" as described in this short clip from Kung Fu Panda 2:

In the movie, Master Shifu goes on to demonstrate what can be done when a state of Inner Peace has been achieved: he delicately catches a falling drop of water... but instead of it splashing on him, he's able to magically keep it intact as it rolls over his hand and arms until he deposits it on a flower while Po watches in amazement. Later in the movie, Po discovers inner peace... duplicating the exercise with a raindrop. Toward the end of the movie, Po harnesses this new-found mastery of Inner Peace to defeat the evil Lord Shen.

That was a fictional (and animated) dramatization, of course, but it's not all fiction. Top performing athletes and artists have discovered that they have to 'let go' of conscious thought controlling their actions in order to achieve their full potential. Consider a lead guitarist performing an intricate solo, for example:

Watch the quickness and accuracy of his fingering as he literally shreds through dozens if not hundreds of perfectly timed hammer-ons and pull-offs in rapid succession. Not a single "buzz" of a miss-fretted string, not a single missed note.

Would this be remotely possible if he was consciously thinking of each individual action he had to do? Of course not. He's on autopilot. He's disengaged his conscious thought from his actions, letting his subconscious mind and body perform.

Watch the expression on his face around the 1:33 mark in the video clip. That, my friends, is Inner Peace.

The same principles apply to many different sports, especially sports that require split-second reactions such as table tennis (aka ping pong):

OK, I slipped some more fiction in here from the movie Forrest Gump, but 'real' table tennis is similar - the mind has to react quickly to recognize the speed and direction of the opponent's volley, anticipate effects of spin on both the path of the ball in air and bounce on the table... then coordinate with the body to properly position the paddle to return the shot - taking into account all the factors such as speed, spin, angle of paddle and so on to get the ball back to the opponent's side of the table.

Again, this is not something that can be achieved with step-by-step instructions from the conscious brain.

Consider another high-speed sport such as tennis:

Here, Federer returns a 140 mph serve from Roddick with precision for an easy win. Those of you who have not played tennis may not fully appreciate what he accomplished. A tennis court is 78 feet long. A tennis ball going 140 mph covers that distance in slightly more than one-third of one second. That means Federer had that much time to recognize the shot, calculate its trajectory, where it would bounce, where it would be when it got to him, position his racket (and body) for a return... and not just any return, but one perfectly aimed at Roddick's feet for a win.

"Immortal" the announcer said... but no, it was very mortal... just Federer harnessing the power of the subconscious mind by quieting his conscious mind. Inner Peace. Zen State.

In the movie Top Gun, one of the many lines that made an impression on me occurred during a classroom review of the pilots' performance earlier in the day. Viper, the Zen-master of the Top Gun school was critical of Maverick's (Tom Cruise) choices during a dogfight. He turned the review over to Charlie (Kelly McGinnis), who continued to question his actions:

"Aircraft one performs a split S? That's the last thing you should do. The MiG has you in his gun sight, what were you thinking?"

Maverick replies "You don't have time to think up there. If you think, you're dead."

And he's right, of course. I can't say so from personal experience (unless you count computer simulators), but I can certainly appreciate the split-second reactions that would have to be made during a dogfight in which two or more jet fighters are performing intricate maneuvers at hundreds of miles per hour.

I can't relate to rolling raindrops down my arm or returning cannon balls like Po did in Kung Fu Panda either, but, being a musician and athlete, I can relate to some of the other examples given above. I lettered on the tennis team in high school, and engaged in rapid-fire net volley sessions on several occasions.

I've also played quite a bit of table-tennis, and even had the pleasure (if you can call it that) of playing against a nationally-ranked player on a fairly regular basis. He worked for me as a software engineer when I lived in Colorado Springs, and regularly hung out with some of the athletes a few blocks away at the U.S. Olympic Training Center during his free time. He kicked my butt 99.5% of the time, but I steadily improved and got to the point where I could return some of his hardest shots by pure reaction... again, by "letting go" and quieting my conscious mind.

Please understand I'm not relating these experiences to say "look at me"... but rather in an effort to endorse books and other materials that discuss this subject. I'm trying to say "I get it," "I've experienced it" and "there's really something to this."

One of my favorite books on the subject is The Inner Game of Tennis. In this book, the author talks about Self 1 and Self 2, with Self 2 being the subconscious part of the mind responsible for peak athletic performance. It's the brash, egotistical Self 1 that needs to be "quieted" in order to let Self 2 perform.

So what does all of this have to do with billiards, anyway? Pool is certainly not a game of quick reactions like most of my examples so far... but it turns out that the part of the brain responsible for peak high-speed athletic performance (Self 2) is the very same part of the brain that's ideally suited to handle the identification and calculation of the myriad of factors involved in shooting pool.

Applying the principles of "Quieting the Mind" will enable a pool player to achieve much higher levels of performance. Is it a magic bullet? No, not really... as with other sports the mechanics, knowledge, and strategy need to be sound - and the muscle memory needs to be put in place through hours and hours of practice... but once you have a handle on those things, successfully quieting the mind will raise your game to a whole new level.

Please understand that I'm not saying that only advanced players should work on this. It absolutely makes sense for beginners and/or intermediate players to be working on it as well. For one thing, it's not as easy as it sounds to master. It takes practice. If you begin working on it now, you'll have a better handle on it when your muscle memory catches up. Also, several of the tips result in an increased awareness... which in turn gives Self 2 more "inputs" related to each shot as your internal catalog and muscle memory is being built.

So... ten tips for quieting the mind...

1. Make final decisions on all aspects of the shot before getting down into your final shooting stance. You'll run across this nugget of advice often and for good reason. Once you're down in your shooting stance, you ideally need to completely surrender the completion of your shot to Self 2, the subconscious mind. Things that you consciously thought about before the shot: where you want the object ball to go, where you want the cue ball to end up, what path the cue ball needs to take, and so on, need to be settled.

2. Focus intently on the object ball as you make your final stroke. Most people go through some eye patterns during the practice strokes... shifting the eyes between the cue ball and the object ball. That's perfectly normal. When it's time to make the final stroke, however, you should be focused intently on the object ball. Exactly where on the object ball might vary a bit from person to person depending on how they aim and so on, but for purposes of quieting the mind, the key is to be focusing intently on the ball. Why? Frankly, part of the reason is it gives Self 1 something to do that's not destructive. It's like redirecting a child to another acceptable activity rather than simply telling them not to do something that's not acceptable.

3. If distracted while in your shooting stance, get back up and regroup. Do not continue with the shot. Get up, deal with the distraction, then go back through your pre-shot routine before getting back into your shooting stance. Perhaps stating the obvious, but it's a good idea to eliminate as many potential distractions as possible before even starting the match. Make sure you're not hungry, thirsty, or need to go to the bathroom. Wrap up text conversations, turn off your phone if possible and so on.

4. Let go of the ego. Remove all judgement from your shooting. All of it. Ego and judgement come from Self 1. If you make a bad shot, there's no need for Self 1 to reinforce that it was a bad shot by scolding yourself or trying to consciously analyze what you did wrong. There's equally no purpose in telling your opponent, your friends, or other rail birds what you did wrong. Self 2 already knows it was a bad shot and just as likely knows what you did wrong - probably better than you do. Perhaps surprisingly, the same advice applies to good shots. How many times have you seen someone fluff a simple shot right after dropping a really tough shot? It's a good bet Self 1 was still in the game doing high 5's, fist pumps, and chest bumps. Note that there's a fine line between judgement and simple acknowledgement. Acknowledgement is OK.

5. Increase awareness of your stroke. Heighten your senses of all aspects of your stroke in a non-judgmental way. This may at first seem counter-intuitive, but it can be done. Again, like #2 above, you're trying to engage Self 1 in helpful activities. Gathering more information for Self 2 is helpful. Trying to judge and/or consciously correct what's going on during the stroke is not helpful. Increase the awareness of your grip and how the butt of the cue stick pivots on your fingers with each practice stroke. Feel the shaft of your cue slide through your bridge. With most bridges, even a closed bridge, a V is formed. Focus on the weight of the shaft in that V... does the weight equally balance between each side of the V and stay balanced throughout your stroke? Yes, it sounds like I'm asking for a judgement here, but that's not the intent. I asked the question to indicate the level of awareness you should be trying to achieve. With the right amount of awareness, you should be able to answer that question, but don't do so in a judgmental way (again, simple acknowledgement is OK). Trust Self 2 to make the necessary course corrections. Similarly, you should be acutely aware of as many other aspects of your stroke as possible including what it felt like when the tip hit the cue ball all the way through your follow through.

6. Increase awareness of your stance. Repeat the previous exercise, only focusing on your stance. Feel the weight on your feet. Is your weight equally distributed between your feet? Your awareness should be such that you can answer that question. Is your stance relaxed and balanced? Is your whole body relaxed? While writing this step, I realized this is an area where conscious adjustment sometimes takes place when first getting into the shooting stance - you're down... you realize your aim is slightly off, so you shift a little bit... which in turn causes an imbalance on your feet. Go ahead and move your feet to correct this! I consider this adjustment to still be "getting into the shooting stance"... and therefore appropriate and necessary. Once you've made any such adjustments, lock them in, fade Self 1 out and let Self 2 take over.

7. Observe your stroke on a regular basis. This departs from some of the other steps in that it's not something you generally do while you're shooting. With some sports it may be possible to watch aspects of your motions in a mirror or something, but I've found that to be difficult to do with pool. The best thing to do is record yourself with a video camera. The most convenient time to do this, of course, is during practice sessions, but make an effort to record yourself during competition as well because you may find you do things differently! Again, the goal here is to observe in a non-judgmental way. Don't rip yourself up with negative declarations like "I've got horrible practice strokes." Observe, acknowledge, correct.

8. Trust Self 2. Once you're down in your stance and turned things over to Self 2, you absolutely must trust that Self 2 is going to come through for you and do the right thing. Any second-guessing or last minute corrections by Self 1 will likely screw things up. If you feel yourself doing this, stand back up and start over.

9. Let the shot happen. Don't make it happen, let it happen. Trying to make it happen is something Self 1 would do. You shouldn't be in conscious control at this point. Self 1 is the control freak. If it seems like Self 1 is still fighting for control (and it will, trust me) beat it back with a stick by keeping it busy doing other things like focusing even more intently on the object ball as previously mentioned. Be like Forrest Gump - "never, ever, take your eye off the ball."

10. Observe the results. Simple acknowledgments, non-judgmental. Did the object ball go where it was supposed to go? Did the cue ball go where it was supposed to go? This is an essential part of the process of feeding Self 2's data banks for future use. Self 2 took in all of the inputs you gave through increased awareness and if something was mechanically amiss, it probably caught it and stored that info away as well.

The Self 2 of an experienced player may very well be capable of resolving the reasons for any variances between actual and expected on its own in most cases. Keep in mind this might not be the case with a beginner because the beginner simply doesn't have the knowledge and experience necessary to explain an unexpected behavior... but that will improve over time as knowledge improves through experimentation.

Good luck beating Self 1 into submission!

Be sure to check out all of the other great PoolSynergy articles listed here.

English as a Lifestyle

2011-07-31T23:30:00.000-07:00

OK, I seem to be continuing this trend of getting fewer posts up than in the past, but I'm sure it's just a phase I'm going through - LOL.

Truth be told, I've been extremely busy and playing pool nearly every night of the week lately. It's been a good run - but during this burst of activity, other parts of my life have fallen behind a bit. I haven't been able to concentrate on focused practice and drills. I haven't been to the gym in who knows how long. Normal around-the-house 'stuff' is falling behind a bit. My kids don't recognize me anymore (unless they want money or food).

And so it goes in the life of a Pool Hall Junkie!

Truth be told, I've enjoyed this burst of activity, and I think it's done my game some good. I don't begrudge any of it, and I don't feel like I've 'lost control' or burnt myself out. In some ways, it reminds me of the Fartlek training I did back in my high school years (hey, I didn't name it, only did it... and no beans were harmed).

I picked up some new experiences, played in new leagues, and met new people. All good things for my game!

Starting next month, I've decided to consolidate my league play a bit to free up some nights for other things like deep practice (The Talent Code) to focus on improving specific areas of my game. I've identified several areas that need attention, and put together a plan that should address them quite nicely. I'll be discussing the elements of my plan in future posts over the next couple of months.

Back to my recent burst of pool hall activity - one of the "new" things I did was join a 10-ball league. I've played in a couple 10-ball tournaments before, so it's not a completely new game to me... but this is the first time I've played it in a league setting. I've noticed that 10-ball has improved my overall game a bit. The called-shot format has forced a bit more discipline upon me... especially since you can only call one ball and one pocket. While playing 9-ball, I occasionally take shots that involve two or more balls through caroms or billiards. Often, I'd take such shots knowing the odds were good that I'd sink one or the other, or maybe both and any of the possible outcomes were fine as long as I made a legal hit and pocketed a ball. When you have to call one and only one ball/pocket, you're forced to look at the shot more critically.

The break is a little different in 10-ball too, but I'm happy to report that I've done a pretty good job of sinking balls on the break more often than not.

There are only two weeks left in the season, and it's been a great experience. I really like my teammates, and it's given me exposure to players I've never played before as well.

One such player I played last week. I had to spot him a game on the wire, so he's somewhat less average on the average hack scale than I am.

Um... have you ever picked up on something with an opponent that made you simultaneously cock your head to the side in WTF-type amazement, try to keep a straight face, and get eye contact with teammates to see their reactions? Of course you have! Well, at least some of you have.

This opponent seemed to be seriously enamored with English. Overly enamored. Terribly, dreadfully enamored.

Prior to most shots he'd stand upright, studying the shot... then say something like "1.5 right" to himself... get down on the shot and shoot it. I must say I usually ignore what people are saying to themselves at the table, and so it took me a little bit to pick up on this... but once I did, I found myself being drawn in with serious jaw-dropping WTFifness!

He was using English on just about every shot. Worse, it became apparent that wasn't just using English for position on the next shot. After missing a not-too-difficult bank into the side pocket, for example, he made a remark to his teammates along the lines of "I didn't get enough English on that one, I needed one and three-quarters tips of right and just couldn't get it."

And his teammates nodded silently.

WTF?

That shot in particular could have been made with a center ball hit... or pretty much anything in the vertical plane (draw/follow) and/or varying degrees of right or left English. Sure... some choices may have led to a scratch, but he wasn't explaining away a scratch... he was explaining away a miss! Bizarre. And even more bizarre that one of his better teammates didn't point that out to him at some point (he does have a couple of really good players on his team).

Numerous other thoughts came to mind: how was he "calculating" the needed amount of English for the shot in the first place? Was this method calibrated for his tip? His cue? The cue ball? His stroke? Was he even remotely aware of the numerous factors that affected the applied spin on the cue ball?

Anyway, it was entertaining.

Sure, there are differing opinions on the use of English, but personally I try to follow the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) as much as possible. I cue in the vertical plane of the cue ball whenever possible, and try to set up for natural position if I can. Of course that's not always possible. Yes, I use English here and there to get better position on the next shot. On occasion, I screw that up pretty badly which brings me back to Earth!**

The use of English for the sole purpose of sinking an object ball (via spin-induced throw or cue ball to object ball spin transfer) should be a very rare thing, in my opinion.

The bottom line is English introduces all sorts of additional variables into your game that can affect aim: throw, deflection, swerve, and squirt to name a few. Worse, some of these effects vary due to other factors such as ball cleanliness and so on... which introduces even more inconsistencies into your game as you travel from venue to venue!

** Ironically, I screwed up shape badly on the final 10-ball of this match with overzealous use of English... but managed to recover, thank goodness.

The Continuing Adventures of LASIK

2011-06-27T01:01:00.000-07:00

I believe this is the first weekend since the end of February that I haven't had a tournament!

I've also been buried with other things - daughter graduating from high school, family and other company in from out of town, etc, etc. As a result, I'm behind, plain and simple. This is only the second posting for June (lame). I only had two postings in May (lame)... and I didn't even do PoolSynergy this month (ultra lame).

I'm behind on numerous topics, so I'll try to chip away at them over the next week or so. First up is... LASIK.

As you may recall, I took the plunge and got LASIK surgery a few months ago on March 31st. For those of you sitting on the edge of your seats waiting to hear the good news about how that went... keep sitting. I wish I had better news to report, but unfortunately my vision is less than optimal.

This is extremely frustrating. I put off eye surgery for years and years. I kept an eye on the state-of-the-art. I battled internally whether I should take the plunge or not. I even resisted when my mom suggested getting it done by her employer (she was an office manager for an eye surgeon for several years). She obviously had inside knowledge of his success rate and so on, and no doubt I'd get a good discount... but still I opted to wait. The procedures at the time (late 80's, early 90's) seemed to be enjoying a good deal of success, but I knew they were still in their infancy for the most part... and really there was nothing pushing me to go for it. I was OK with glasses and also able to wear contacts on occasion when glasses didn't cut it.

Fast forward a couple of decades... once I got serious about playing pool, I found playing with glasses to be annoying. I also discovered that playing with contacts wasn't perfect either, especially in the smoke-filled bars and halls here in Las Vegas where I spent most of my pool playing hours. It wasn't so bad in the smoke-free bars when I traveled to California and Arizona, but even then I discovered that I couldn't keep score or look at things like my phone or menus while wearing contacts because presbyopia had crept in on me (I wore progressive lens glasses as a result).

So I revisited the possibility of corrective eye surgery. I have numerous friends who have done it and are happy with their results. I checked out some of the local doctors, and found at least a couple of them with clean records with the FDA and recommended by local ophthalmologists. It turned out that a couple of my friends had their surgeries done by one of them and were able to personally recommend him. Digging further, I discovered that he was known as a doctor who people often turned to in order to correct errors that other doctors made. This all sounded pretty promising.

Enough about the doctor. I looked into the available procedures and how those were coming along since the days of my mom being an office manager. It sounded like significant progress had indeed been made! One procedure in particular, iLASIK, was being touted as the first and still the only procedure approved by the military for pilots and even by NASA for astronauts. This caught my eye (no pun intended) for at least a couple of reasons - (1) I initially wanted to go to the Air Force Academy to be a pilot but couldn't because of my vision. I checked into eye surgery then and found out it wasn't an option. (2) Going through a stringent military program myself, I knew how conservative the military (and NASA) would be about people they dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars of training into. I knew they wouldn't approve a procedure on something as important as the eyes unless there was very minimal chance of screwing up their investment.

Well, I'm sorry to report that NASA would be pissed with my results so far if I was an astronaut. I've approximated what I see when I look at a stoplight in this Photoshopped image.

It's not only noticeably less than 20/20 (in my distance eye - I opted for monovision), I'm also seeing double images... even with one eye closed!

My eye doctor calls it astigmatism. I call it eff'd up. I didn't have significant astigmatism before, and now through the miracle of laser surgery I do. Actually, my understanding of astigmatism (at least regular astigmatism) is that images are distorted in some way - a circle can appear to be an oval, for example. I'm seeing distinctly separate images rather than distorted images, and it gets worse with distance. When I see an airplane flying across the sky, for example, I see two separate images.

Hopefully, this will have a happy ending. My doctor says he's committed to getting it right, and is currently monitoring my progress on a regular basis. A second "touch-up" procedure is likely at this point to get me dialed in better, and so far he's confident that he'll be able to fix it to my satisfaction. They say they need to let my eyes stabilize before doing a second procedure, and that makes perfect sense to me. I want them to do everything possible to get it right next time.

I'm being patient and hopeful... but can anyone blame me for being a little nervous about this whole thing? Yes, my 'uncorrected' eyes are much better than they were by most measures. I can function without glasses and/or contacts. I can drive, work, etc., but definitely not as well as I could before surgery with glasses. I struggle at times with certain things that were easy with glasses, and I think it all makes me tired earlier than usual.

So how does this affect my game you might ask? It's impossible to be sure, of course... and I'll admit I delayed writing about this for awhile because I thought fessing up about my vision woes might give my opponents some sort of advantage, but I have since decided to go ahead and get it out there. The LASIK commercials make it sound so nice and rosy... you wake up the next morning, able to see the birds chirping in high definition and all that. Well, maybe some people do... maybe even most people do - but I'm here to tell you that not everyone does - even if they researched the doctor and ponied up extra bucks for the best procedure currently available.

Back to my shooting... I actually am doing pretty darn well all things considered. I haven't won any tournaments, but have had several 2nd place finishes in difficult fields since my surgery. I've beaten people I don't always beat. I've even beaten a few people for the first time ever. I'm stringing together respectable runs including several break and runs in both 8 & 9-ball. I've also had typical periods of mediocre play as well, of course, but that's normal. Overall, I think the negatives of less-than-great visual acuity (and double vision) are being countered by the positives of being able to shoot with a better stance and not having to deal with glasses... so it's more or less a wash, as long as I pick the right object ball image to shoot at.

Physics Don't Lie...

2011-06-06T02:34:00.000-07:00

... but sometimes people do. Or maybe they don't understand physics. Or maybe they're just delusional. Or in denial. Or maybe all of the above.

Yeah, we had a bit of controversy on a shot yesterday at the annual 8-ball "cities" tournament, which is the local team qualifier for APA Team Nationals in August. As expected in tournaments like this, it was an extremely competitive environment and tensions ran high from time to time.

The shot in question is approximated in the diagram below. The opposing team's player was shooting stripes, and his object ball was on or near the rail as shown. My player's 3-ball and the cue ball were more or less as shown. A key point was: the cue ball had to completely pass the 3-ball in order to hit the object ball. Due to the ball positions, there was no possibility of a simultaneous hit (which would have been a legal hit).

Anyway, the player on the opposing team took the shot... and my player said "That was a foul, right? You hit the three first."

The shooter denied it. "No, it was a good hit, I hit my ball first."

My player replied, "Then how did you move the three?"

"I put a lot of draw on the shot, and it came back and hit the three afterwards."

The opposing captain jumped in with a (very weak) argument "He made the shot, how could he have made the shot if he hit the three first?"

I jumped in with "look where the three ended up, how could it possibly get there if he drew back into it after a good hit??"

A neutral bystander (high SL player) from a team at an adjacent table jumped in, saying "I saw it, it was a bad hit."

General chaos broke out for a minute or two... but it was quickly apparent that the shooter and his captain were not going to budge from their completely delusional stand that it was a good hit. Given that we didn't get someone to watch the hit, we had to fall back on the 'unwatched disputes go to the shooter' rule. Interestingly enough, I heard this very same captain reminding his players about the rule during the previous round (they happened to be playing at the table next to us). Apparently, he's a big believer in the rule.

Don't get me wrong, it's a decent rule to settle things when all else fails... but I also believe in being honest about the hit in the first place. Or at least being open-minded about evidence that counters what you think you saw. There is NO frigging way that the 3-ball could have been deflected forward to the middle of the end rail with a legal hit. Period. End of story. I don't care how much draw or what kind of English was used.

In hindsight, sure, we should have gotten someone to watch the hit. But hindsight is 20/20. This was not exactly an immediately obvious "hit watch" situation where the balls were frozen together or something. The shooter was also in the middle of a run and shooting at a fairly good clip, so the decision to get a hit watch would have had to have been a quick one. And calling for a hit watch would have been disruptive to the shooter's rhythm which I hate to do unless necessary... but so be it.

Because of this incident and particularly due to the attitudes displayed during and even well after the incident, I'm going to be a lot more careful (and quicker) about calling for hit watches when dealing with this player and/or captain in the future.

And why not? It's what they want. It's what they demand. They were very clear to us that it was our fault for not calling a hit watch. And it's tough to dispute that, but there's also fine balance between calling a hit watch when necessary and overdoing it. For me, the fine balance has been permanently tipped towards the cautious side when dealing with either member of this duo in the future. Fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice, shame on me.

There's two sides to the "you should have called a hit watch" coin as well. The best sportsmen will suggest to their opponent that it might be a good idea to get a hit watch. Think about it - being the shooter, they're in the best position to make the suggestion anyway... they have the best picture of the shot, and they know how they intend to approach it. The opponent often doesn't know what the shooter is going to do until he's down on the shot. This is particularly true in a non-rotation type game such as 8-ball. So while it's the opponent's responsibility to get the hit watch, it behooves the shooter to approach the whole situation in a reasonable and sportsmanship-like manner unless he wants to get shocked out of his stance in the middle of his practice strokes by his opponent exclaiming that he wants a hit watch.

Given the nature of this particular situation, I wrestled in my mind whether I should name names. It's generally been my policy to avoid doing so, particularly when dealing with negative situations. The focus of this blog is more about situations, technique, equipment, rules, my experiences, etc... and not individual people (unless I'm giving them kudos or something)... so I decided to focus more on the situation than the actual people involved because I'm sure there are people like this in just about every league across the country (and beyond).

While thinking about this, however, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen one of the names (the shooter) mentioned somewhere before... and sure enough, it turns out that he's a blogosphere veteran. Figure the odds of that one, eh? Small world.

It also turns out that the team in question went on to qualify for Nationals, so I'll congratulate them on that. They are a decent team, and my only hope is that they represent Las Vegas well... both in performance and sportsmanship. I'll add that this particular situation was not the determining factor in the outcome of the match between our teams. Although the bad call enabled the shooter to win the game in question, he was already well behind in the match, clearly out-gunned, and lost his match in the end anyway.

Kudos goes to my player for putting the incident behind him and continuing to kick butt despite the BS and spot of an extra game.

PoolSynergy: Pool Mecca

2011-05-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the May edition of:

PoolSynergy is a blog carnival where several pool bloggers collaborate each month to write about a common topic.

This month's topic, brought to you by John Barton, is Pool Meccas. This was another topic I struggled a bit with, partly because I think I was being too narrow with my definition of the term "mecca" and partly because I am still fairly new (relatively speaking) to the world of pool and simply don't know everything that's available out there.

With the PoolSynergy deadline looming, I chose to write about a subject I'm familiar with: Las Vegas.

Why do I consider Las Vegas a pool mecca? Well, I can't say it's about the permanent facilities... it's more about the temporary ones that pop up on an annual basis that attract thousands of cue toting pool enthusiasts from across the country and even around the world... and to me, this was a perfect fit for the term "mecca" being used to describe a place many people flock to. I've got to say, walking into one of the big ballrooms to see literally hundreds of tables lined up is awe-inspiring!

Indeed, as I write this, thousands of players and dozens of vendors are in town at the Riviera for the BCAPL Nationals. This is a HUGE event held every year in the month of May. To clarify a bit, it's not really a single event... more of a gaggle of events held in close proximity both date-wise and location-wise for the convenience of the attending pool enthusiasts. There are numerous divisions of competition, and I'm not even going to attempt to list them all. Connected events also include the 2011 US Open One Pocket Championships (in progress as I write) with match-ups such as Cory Deuel taking on Efren Reyes (playing on Table 8 right now). Also in town this month is the 2011 US Open 10-ball Championships. Although I don't compete in the BCAPL events (yet), I always make an effort to spend some time there because there's a lot of great pool to watch and tons of vendors to check out.

Last week was the ACS Nationals. While I'm aware of this event, I have to admit that I haven't participated or even peeked in on it yet, so I don't know a whole lot about it. I do recall seeing that it generated some controversy in the last year in a couple of ways: they moved to the Tropicana this year (used to be at the Riviera) and the dates for this event overlapped somewhat with the BCAPL Nationals listed above. Apparently, there was potential for conflict if someone wanted to compete in both events. My understanding was that they were going to do their best to reduce/eliminate any conflict, so we'll have to see how things worked out.

Last month was the APA Singles National Championships. This is an event that I personally competed in both this year and last year. Like the events above, the APA Nationals is a huge event that draws thousands of players from all over the country. There were also some competitors from Canada as well as Japan. Getting to the APA Nationals is a bit of an accomplishment in itself since you have to qualify for it through local and regional qualifier tournaments. The APA Team National Championships are help later in the year around the August time frame.

Besides these major league championships, there are several other events that pop up in town from time to time, such as the Mosconi Cup. I missed it last time I was in town due to some other commitments I had, but I'm going to make every effort to make it this year.

Be sure to check out the Pool Mecca posts from other PoolSynergy authors as well!

APA Singles Nationals n Stuff

2011-05-01T21:45:00.000-07:00

Fairly short blurb to close out APA Singles Nationals last Thursday-Saturday...

As previously mentioned, I qualified for the APA 9-Ball Singles Nationals this year. Unlike some other national tournaments, it's not possible to buy in to this one... you have to earn it by winning a regional qualifier, so just making it is a pretty big deal. I've been very fortunate to qualify twice in my short pool playing career (last year I qualified in 8-ball).

Last year I was really happy just to be there and approached the whole thing as getting some much needed experience. I was extremely happy to do something better than two-and-out and knew I'd be back.

This year, as you might imagine, I had higher expectations. Now I was the one who had been there before and knew the ropes, etc, etc. Once again, I didn't go two-and-out which was good... but really I had hoped for much more. So I have to say I'm disappointed overall which in turn gives me additional incentive to work harder next time, be more prepared, learn from this year's mistakes, etc, etc. Once again, I'll be back!

Another bummer was that I got knocked out by a player from Las Vegas (ironically in the round after I knocked out another Las Vegas player). WTF? Here I am in a national tournament that drew hundreds of players from all over the country (and other countries, actually - there were players from Canada and Japan as well)... and I end up mostly playing local people I know? I've played the guy who knocked me out several times. He's not only in the same league, he's in the same division! He's a good shot, we've swapped games, etc... but it's pretty anti-climatic when in that sea of hundreds of pool tables the two of us don't even bother to put on our name tags or check IDs or chat about where we're from or whatever. Blah.

I left the Riviera on a high note though - after being eliminated, I headed over to the Mini-Mania tournament room to see what was available. Mixed scotch double 9-ball @ 1PM caught my eye - it was a 32-board; a sizable field for a Mini. A few possible partners immediately came to mind, so I figured I'd start with the one(s) most likely to be interested and in the building. I got an enthusiastically positive response to my text from Amy Encinias - bingo! She came over to the Mini registration desk within minutes and we signed up before she had to dash off to another match.

Amy and I have played against each other a couple of times and we've both seen each other play several times, but we've never played together as partners. I looked forward to the opportunity even though I knew we'd probably be up against some teams in town for the Jack & Jill competition (and therefore likely to have spent more time playing as partners). Since Mini-Mania tournaments are single elimination, each individual match was a do-or-die situation... so the pressure was on!

As with other APA 9-ball matches, this one was scored as a race to a final point count (the 1-8 balls each being worth one point while the 9-ball was worth two points). Based on our combined SLs, Amy and I had to race to 42. One of the teams we played against only had to race to 25 since they had a lower combined skill level - yikes! To make things worse, they won the lag and got a bit of a jump on us in the first rack! We managed to get our feet under us though and started piling up points and eventually prevailed.

We rolled through three other teams and ended up in the finals - yeah! The team we met in the finals was very good - we could not afford to make mistakes against them, but unfortunately we made a few. They took advantage, and defeated us. I was very happy with taking 2nd place in that field though! It put some cash in our pockets and a smile on our faces.

Reverse Angle Kick

2011-04-26T21:53:00.000-07:00

In this game won and lost by fractions of an inch, I seem to be particularly adept at being on the wrong side of that inch fraction. Just last night, I blew an 8-ball break-and-run by over running position on the last ball by a half-inch. Ugh. Up 'til that point, the run was a nice challenging surgical cluster-busting run, not one of those magical ones where all of your opponent's balls line up neatly tucked away against the long rail while all of your balls end up hanging in open pockets (the remaining few that didn't drop on the break, of course). Oh, and the 8-ball sits there all by itself center-table.

No, it wasn't one of those. It was ducking in and out of traffic, making something runnable that wasn't really runnable in the first place. Then all I had to do was drift over near one of the opponent's balls for a simple stop shot on the key ball that would in turn leave me perfect shape on the 8-ball. Sigh. Whitey drifted ever so slightly too far. About a half an inch. Probably less. I could still hit my ball, but didn't have the angle I needed. Again.

The whole scenario got me thinking of some of the crazy stuff I've had to pull out of my butt (or at least attempt to) due to sloppiness in position play. I'm mumbling to myself, of course, because I'm sure none of you have this problem. ;)

It also reminded me of a game the previous week where I once again over ran position by about a half inch or less. The game was 9-ball that time, and I had a really delicate shot on the 1-ball in the corner pocket (next to the 5-ball as shown in the diagram). I obviously wanted to line up on the 2-ball which was a couple diamonds back up the rail. The 1-ball was far enough out from the corner that a stop shot wouldn't leave me the shape I needed, and I didn't want the cue left too far off the long rail or shape on the 4-ball would have been tougher. So I used a drag shot to slow the cue ball down but get just enough follow to put me near the pocket without scratching.

The good news is, I didn't scratch.

The bad news is, I followed it just enough to hook myself behind the corner of the pocket... unable to hit the 2-ball. Sooo frustrating. Worse, the 5-ball blocked just about every conceivable kick path I could think of (even a five-railer, Jeanette... sorry to report your ESPN "Tip of the Day" didn't help).

I sat there and scratched my head for a bit while my opponent chortled at my misfortune and I concluded it was Hail Mary time. I had a very narrow route to work with between the corner of the pocket and the 5-ball... heading pretty much towards the center diamond on the far rail. I first considered using right English to widen the angle off the foot rail and try to hit the 2-ball with a two-rail kick (in theory coming off the side rail between the 6 and 7-balls towards the 2-ball). I didn't have a good feel for the English required and angles involved, so I wasn't so crazy about that option.

I then considered another possibility. I wondered if I could load up on enough left English to reverse the kick angle and hit the 2-ball with a one-rail kick off the end rail? The 2-ball would be a bigger target from that angle (compared to above) and I also realized that if I wasn't able to reverse the angle that far, I might get it far enough to have a shot at hitting the 2-ball on the second pass after the cue ball came back off of the head rail.

Overall, I liked the odds a lot better, and was mainly just trying to get a good hit at this point (luckily, the 2-ball wasn't frozen to the side rail) but I honestly had no idea if I was going to be able to stroke the ball well enough in the vicinity of the pocket and the side rail and the 5-ball. And even if I managed to stroke it perfectly, I wasn't sure if I could bring it back that far. The chortling continued and perhaps even intensified.

I lined up... took a few practice strokes... took a couple extra... and unleashed my best effort.

The chortling halted abruptly and was replaced with "DUDE!!!"

I got the angle, made a good hit on the 2-ball... and... damn near made it! It rattled in the pocket next to the 5-ball. Yeah, a little luck was involved. But that's part of the game too, right?

Cue Abuse

2011-04-22T13:31:00.000-07:00

Wow, just wow.

Player, mentor, friend, and cue mechanic Ron Worley (to whom I've previously credited the name of this blog) passed along a photo to me that's just hard to believe... so you're going to have to see it for yourself:

Behold the wonder tip!

I couldn't even imagine playing with this thing - surely just about anything other than a center-ball hit led to miscues? Hmmm... maybe it's a top secret training device for enforcing center-ball hits!!??

Anyway, I'm sure I'm stating the obvious when I say "don't do this!" Your equipment is a partner in many respects - it fearlessly goes into battle with you night after night... but if you let it down, it'll let you down. I can't imagine anyone being competitive with this stick in the condition shown. Not only is the tip obviously worn well beyond the point of needing replacement, but overzealous shaping (and chalking) damaged the ferrule on the tip as well as the side - leading to much more costly and time-consuming repairs.

Changing the subject now that I'm a little sick to my stomach, this week was the first week of playoffs for the local APA league. All three of my teams made the playoffs with the Monday night 9-ball team ending up in second place in the season's point race, while my Wednesday and Thursday night teams ended up in first place in their respective divisions. Unfortunately, we didn't fare so well this week. We lost Monday and Wednesday to tough teams. On Thursday, however, our opponents didn't even show up!!?? How weird is that? Since we were in first, we were supposed to play the wild card team. They didn't show, didn't call, nothing so we'll be playing for first place next week against the winner of the other playoff match... and playing for third place on Monday and Wednesday night.

PoolSynergy: Fav Game

2011-04-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the April edition of:

PoolSynergy is a blog carnival where several pool bloggers collaborate each month to write about a common topic. For those of you in the United States, this time we're offering the additional service of giving you an excuse to procrastinate further on your taxes - at no extra charge!*

* Offer not available in all areas - certain fees and restrictions may apply.

St. Louis Johnny is this month's host and he suggested we write about our favorite cue sports game. I figured the chances were good that the more common games I play (8-ball, 9-ball & 10-ball) would be covered by others and/or pretty well known by the majority of the audience, so I decided to dig a little deeper to cover another game I play regularly for practice: Rotation Pool.

Depending on region or perhaps minor variations in rules, this game is also known by a number of different names including 61, Chicago, Boston, and others. With most of these, the general premise of the game is the same. Since my goal is to give a basic overview, I won't get too hung up on trying to sort out any minor rule differences. There are a couple of other interesting variations I'll highlight later in the article though.

First off, I want to point out that I've never played this game in 'serious' competition such as league or organized tournament. I have played it for money though. Perhaps more notably, I've played it for money in the Philippines! I lost. In fact, I lost a lot.

Luckily, losing a lot in the Philippines in the mid-80's didn't amount to a whole lot. It was probably probably cheaper than going out to a movie today in the U.S., but it was a lot to the guys beating my pants off. If I remember right, a frosty bottle of San Miguel beer was the equivalent of around five cents back then!

Now days, Rotation is one of my favorite games because I use it a lot for practice, and I think it's one of the best practice games going. If you happen to catch me banging around balls prior to a match, there's a fairly good chance it's Rotation.

I don't remember where I first saw the suggestion to use it for practice, but I'm guessing I can attribute it to Max Eberle in some way. The reason it's such a good practice game is that it really forces you to improve your position play while at the same time encouraging more complex combination shots as well as solid safety play. It's like 9 or 10-ball on steroids. As I hinted at above, this game is popular in the Philippines, and likely helps to explain the super human position and kicking skills of players like Efren Reyes.

In a nutshell, Rotation is played with all 15 balls racked as shown. For most minor variations, the important balls are the One, Two, and Three balls in the corners (1-ball at the apex, the other two balls in order clockwise as shown) and the 15-ball in the middle.

Some variations (such as Chicago) additionally require the 13-ball and 14-ball to be in the middle, but most variations do not. The 13-ball ended up in the middle for this picture by random chance.

In most minor variations, the play is as follows: as with other rotation games like 9-ball and 10-ball, the lowest numbered ball on the table must be hit by the cue ball first. Again as in 9 or 10-ball, the object ball can be pocketed directly or used indirectly to pocket other balls with combo, carom, or billiard shots. The scoring is a bit different than 9 and 10-ball... in those games, the ultimate goal is to sink the 9 or 10-ball. In Rotation, points are accumulated for each ball pocketed - one point for the 1-ball, nine points for the 9-ball, fifteen points for the 15-ball and so on. The goal is to reach 61 points (explaining one of the AKAs for the game listed above).

The value of 61 is simply the total number of points available (120) divided by two, plus one (or 120/2 + 1 for the mathematically inclined). It is possible to tie, with both players getting exactly 60. In the rare case of a tie, players generally start over again.

One handy thing about Rotation is that it can easily accommodate more than two players. For three players, the race would be to 41 (120/3 + 1) and for four players, the race would be to 31 (120/4 + 1).

As you get some experience with this game, you'll discover that the scoring can make the strategy interesting and maybe even a bit counter-intuitive. You can work your butt off and run the first ten balls through the heavy traffic of the early stages of the game, for example, and only accumulate 55 points. A miss on the 11-ball leaves five balls on a relatively open table to your opponent, which could very well result in a loss. Therefore, the scoring encourages using tougher shots to sink higher numbered balls when possible... and it also tends to encourage a lot of safety play in the early going as well. All of these factors push your skills to the limit - which is why it's such a good practice game.

If keeping a running total of points while shooting sounds more like work than play, there are at least two variations of the game that come to the rescue: Simple Rotation in which you merely count the number of balls pocketed (with the winner being the first person to sink more than half of the balls - eight). Or Eight-ball Rotation, which is played similarly to 8-ball... one player shoots the solid balls in order and the other player shoots the stripes in order. As in 8-ball, the goal is to sink the 8-ball after sinking all of your balls. For this variation, the 8-ball is racked in the middle instead of the 15-ball.

For your viewing pleasure, the below video is an exhibition match of Rotation between Efren Reyes and Ronnie Alcano (race to four). You may not have seen this match unless you've specifically searched for Rotation matches, but there's a good chance you've seen at least one shot from the match if you've searched for anything like "Efren amazing shots." There's a multi-rail kick shot around the 2:00 point of the second video that I've seen numerous times elsewhere.

For convenience, here are the other parts of the video: part two, part three, part four and part five.

Give Rotation (or one of its variations) a try sometime - it is definitely a pool muscle builder!

As always, be sure to check out the other great PoolSynergy articles written by my fellow bloggers.

21st Andy Mercer Memorial

2011-04-09T21:37:00.000-07:00

I apologize for being a little slow to press on this one, but the 21st Annual Andy Mercer 9-ball tournament was a couple weeks ago (Mar 25th-27th) and I've got some video that I'm finally getting around to uploading.

Why the delay? I'm glad you asked because it's a perfect lead-in to a brief rant about a total pile of crap video package - Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD. I bought it on a bit of a whim last fall thinking it'd help me with another video I was working on at the time. I've used other video packages over the years (Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects and Ulead (now Corel) Video Studio) and were generally happy with them... but this one was sitting there on the shelf at Best Buy, was inexpensive, and I recalled hearing a couple decent things about it so I grabbed it.

Worst software purchase in a long time. Maybe ever.

The things I tried to do with it should have been pretty darn simple. Import a video, drop it on the timeline, do a little minor editing, size it and format it for YouTube. Render. But nooOOOoOoooo... the brilliant Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD developers didn't think we wanted to hear the audio recorded by the camera by default (even though it shows an audio track being dragged to the timeline). Or maybe they couldn't figure out how to read the audio format from my camera or something. Either way, I don't care. I read the help file a bit. It said I might benefit from a separate audio editor and suggested another Sony package that magically integrates with this POS video package. F-that.

It also suggested some other audio editors that might work, some of which were downloadable, so I went that route with a freebie that I've used before. Even with the audio editor, it was a painful experience. I had to chop several segments out of my interview in order to get the time down to the 15 minute YouTube limit and somewhere along the line, this POS video package lost sync between video and audio so it looked like I was watching an old-school Godzilla flick. I was pissed beyond belief and rapidly running out of time against a hard PoolSynergy deadline.

Fast forward to last weekend. I had these videos on my camera, and knew I needed to get them posted. I was bored. I couldn't see very well due to recent LASIK. Trying to think of things I could do to be halfway productive while still halfway blind, I decided to try working through the step of chopping up the videos into YouTube-sized chunks. I mistakenly assumed the settings from the previous editing session of the interview would still be intact and I'd actually have audio included with my video. I rolled through all seven video segments (several hours of rendering time). Fail. They rendered without audio again. And my vision was bad enough that there was no frigging way I felt like digging through the help files to figure out how to fix it again. Fool me twice, F.U.

Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD is no longer on my computer or in my life.

Last night and today I did what I needed to do with relative ease using Windows Live Movie Maker (free).

On to the Andy Mercer tourney. This is an annual tournament here in Las Vegas intended for "A" players. I don't know off the top of my head what the precise definition of an "A" player is, but I know I'm not there yet... so this is a tournament I watch for now. There's a similar tournament for "B" players at the Rum Runner on the previous weekend - the Doc Hill memorial. I considered entering that one, but had other obligations this year. I plan to enter next year.

The field is limited to 64. Format is: 9-ball, full double elimination, unhandicapped, winner break, rack your own, race to six. The purse in this tournament is sizable, with $6,000 going to the winner this year.

The above frame grab from my video shows synchronized final four shooting by the father-son dynamic Dominguez duo... Oscar on the near table and his father Ernesto on the far table. Ernesto won the Andy Mercer in 2010. There was at least one other father-son duo in the tournament: Emroy and Ray Skenandore.

Anyway, on to the videos. First up is the hot seat match between Oscar Dominguez and Shane Van Boening that was already in progress by the time I got my domestic kid duties done and made my way over to the Rum Runner:

Second video is part two of the hot seat match. In the last game of the match, SVB gave Oscar not one... but the last three balls! Quite the touch of class and show of respect for Oscar if you ask me (or maybe SVB just wanted to get back to the practice table sooner than later). Either way, I thought it was cool.

Video three shows Shane Van Boening practicing on the near table while Ernesto Dominguez and Walter Glass play on the far table.

With video #4, we're down to a single table featuring Ernesto Dominguez duking it out with Shane Van Boening to see who earns the right to take on Oscar Dominguez in the final.

One of the more under-appreciated shots of the tournament (in my opinion, anyways) happens at 10:30. Ernesto sinks the 2-ball and draws the cue ball more than the length of the table off of the head rail and side rail to get perfect shape on the next ball (the 3-ball I think?).

Surprisingly, the very knowledgeable audience barely blinked. You can hear a single person clap, but that was about it. Yet of all the shots I saw at this tournament, this is the one that stood out to me as one I simply can't do at this point in time. I can do banks, kicks, jumps... sure, not as accurately or consistently as these guys do (or I'd be on the other side of the camera) but I can do them. I have a pretty darn deadly curve shot. I can draw that far... even farther. In fact, I've drawn two table lengths before (to scratch in the corner pocket, unfortunately... sigh).

But I doubt I'll be drawing that far left-handed as he did anytime soon. I bow to Ernesto for that one.

Video #5... part two of Ernesto vs. SVB.

Video #6... part three of Ernesto vs. SVB..

Video #7 is unfortunately a short one because the battery on my camera died... but it's the first few minutes of the first set of the finals - Oscar Dominguez vs. Shane Van Boening.

So there you have it... another year in the books. Shane Van Boening took first, Oscar Dominguez second, Ernesto Dominguez third, and Walter Glass fourth.

Full results can be found here.

Additional coverage of the 2011 Andy Mercer can be found here and here.

I Have a Vision...

2011-04-01T11:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I finally pulled the trigger on LASIK surgery. Today, things are still a little... ummm... cloudy would be the best term I think. Sometime next week I'm halfway expecting to log in and find that this entire article is gibberish.

I'll admit it was tough to resist the urge to wake up this morning screaming in a complete utter panic that I couldn't see at all - which would have been the coolest April Fool's joke of all time, but I decided it might traumatize my kids a bit too much. Not because I was blind, mind you, but because they'd realize I wouldn't be able to do important things like take them to the mall and movies and so on.

After dropping them off at school, I drove to the eye doctor for a follow-up eye appointment. My eye doctor is 8 miles away. Las Vegas traffic sucks. My vision is still a little... ummm... cloudy. Perfect! Then it hit me: other people were probably driving to the same destination with equally bad (or worse) eyesight... ugh!

Actually, the drive didn't go too badly. I took it easy and stayed on surface streets (the term local radio jocks use for non-highway streets even though it makes no sense to me because as far as I can tell highways are also on the surface... but I digress). [halfway expecting to log in next week and find that I wrote "I digest" but I do that too, so it's all good]

The procedure itself was... interesting. The doctor and his staff were good about keeping me apprised of important things during the procedure... things like "you're going to feel a little pressure" which roughly translates to "we're about to shove some sort of odd device into your eye socket and apply a suction so your eye damn near pops out of your head" and "things may go dim or dark, but that's normal." Things indeed went completely dark with my left eye, and given that my eye was wide open and even bulging out of its socket it didn't seem normal at all. In fact, none of this stuff seemed "normal." It didn't go dark with my right eye, so I was able to witness the Intralase light saber cutting a flap on my eye. Going dark might have been better, I haven't decided. Oh, and let's not forget the best line "when the laser is on, it may smell like something's burning... but don't worry, you're not on fire or anything."

Overall, it seems like the procedure went well. Time will tell.

I shot a few racks this morning and am pleased to report that I can shoot OK in a fog if there's ever a league of tournament that requires it. I was making balls reasonably well. At least it sounded like balls were going into pockets.

2011 APA 8-ball Southwest Challenge Day One

2011-03-24T23:50:00.000-07:00

The APA Southwest Challenge is a fun annual tournament that draws folks from all over the southwestern states. There are actually two of these tournaments per year: 8-ball in the Spring and 9-ball in the Fall. Teams of three with a skill level limit of 14 (15 for 9-ball) compete with a pre-set and continuously rotating roster order. This makes things interesting, because you're not able to control the match-ups... they're already determined for you based on how the roster rotates. This means the weakest player on your team may end up playing the strongest player on the other team (or vice-versa). Since they're all handicapped matches, everyone's got a chance... at least in theory.

The first day of the tourney is pretty laid back... registration, practice, and mini-tournaments. One of my teammates and I headed to the Riviera about 7:30 PM to get our team registered, check out the tables, and get some practice in.

When we got there, the conference room was pretty darn packed. There were somewhere around sixty tables and all of them were in use. We made our way to the registration desk and got registered... found out our team number (Las Vegas #12) and checked out the brackets. First round bye... yippee-skippy.

We saw a couple guys packing up their cues at Table #29 and jumped right on it before it had a chance to cool off. We were both shooting pretty darn well... trading games back and forth and finishing most of the games off in one or two innings.

And then, it happened. My break. A good solid break, nice even spread of the balls all the way back to the head rail, and a couple balls dropped. The cue ball planted fairly well near mid-table initially, but then got deflected slightly towards one of the side pockets. Still not bad though, and potentially runnable. Except for one thing.

I broke the frigging cue ball! I couldn't believe it. To borrow a phrase from a fellow blogger, OMGWTF!

In case you've never seen a broken cue ball, they don't roll very well. My hopes of a break-and-run quickly faded as we both stared in amazement at the broken cue ball. It was a decent quality ball too, a Magnetic Aramith like they normally have at APA tournaments at the Riviera (and like the one I tried to run through my dishwasher).

I guess I need to dial back a bit on the Wheaties or something.

I took the ball up to the registration desk and asked if they had another one. They didn't. Believe it or not, they actually wanted me to give them the broken one. Nice try, registration desk people. It's going to end up in a plexiglass box on my trophy shelf. Or something. It's not going to end up in their trash can.

So there you have it... day one of the 2011 Southwest Challenge, and I'm starting off with a bang (and a souvenir).

Dishwasher - Fail

2011-03-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make: I have dirty balls. Mine are nowhere near the worst case I've seen or heard of, mind you... but they're dirty nonetheless and I'm looking for a good solution.

Surfing around the Internet a bit, I ran across some promising home-built contraptions like this one and added building such a thing to my "to-do" list:

The problem is, my "to-do" list is huge and growing... and with various other things on the near horizon for me, I don't see it getting much smaller anytime soon. I needed an interim solution. So I pondered and pondered... and the thought of putting my balls in the dishwasher kept coming to mind.

I didn't act on that thought right away. I asked a few friends if they ever tried putting their balls in the dishwasher. I got some strange looks and wisecracks from that question, but the answer was generally the same - that they hadn't and they never heard of anyone attempting to do it.

I searched a bit on the Internet, but didn't really find anything on the subject. I admit I didn't dig really deep - mainly because some of the links that were coming up were a bit disturbing, to be honest.

So I thought about it a little more - what's the best case scenario? Well, my balls could come out nice and shiny clean and I'd be all happy that I found an easy, readily available way to clean my balls for years to come.

Less than best case? Well, I suppose it just wouldn't work. Dirty balls in, dirty balls out. Back to waiting for the YouTube solution to bubble up to the top of the "to-do" list.

Worst case? I figured worst case would be something like my balls exploding in the dishwasher or something, I dunno. That was the best I could come up with anyway. Now, I honestly didn't think exploding balls was a likely scenario, but it's not like the balls are stamped "dishwasher safe" yanno? Even if they didn't explode, I figured there might some possibility of them warping or the core shifting in some way or something. All of my balls (at least the ones I'd consider putting in the dishwasher) are good quality Aramith balls, so I had more confidence in them surviving the process than I would have if they were made out of other materials like polymer or polyester.

After the APA Regionals in Phoenix, I had a test subject. I bought a magnetic Aramith cue ball some time ago so I could spend some time practicing with it prior to competing in tournaments that would use that type of ball (like APA Nationals, or in this case Regionals, based on my previous experience at the same venue). Practicing with the ball prior to Regionals, I discovered that it seems to have a higher affinity for chalk than the other cue balls I normally use (Aramith Pro Cup and Aramith Red Circle). With the cue balls I usually use, it's pretty easy to wipe the chalk off with a towel or whatever. With the magnetic version, not so much. At least that's been my experience. I'm not sure why... the balls are made by the same company and supposedly out of similar materials... maybe the surface treatment is slightly different.

Anyway, after a couple of weeks practicing with the magnetic ball before Regionals, I ended up with a thoroughly spotted ball desperately needing a good cleaning.

I loaded it into the dishwasher (top rack) and ran it through a normal cycle. I'm happy to say it didn't explode, warp, or anything like that. Unfortunately, it didn't get clean either. Some of the surface grime might have washed off... but as you can see, there are plenty of chalk marks left on it.

I wish I had taken a 'before picture' for comparison purposes, but I honestly don't think the 'before' and 'after' pictures would have been very different. Both pictures here are 'after' pictures taken from slightly different angles.

I'm not sure if you'll be able to tell from the pictures, but there are spots from at least three different types of chalk on the ball. The bright blue spot near the top of the ball on the upper picture as well as the bright blue spots at the 11 o'clock and 5 o'clock positions in the lower picture are from NIR Super Professional Chalk. The black spots near the 1 and 2 o'clock positions are from Black Master Chalk. I use the black Master Chalk when I'm breaking with one of my standard 'house' cues (as I often do when I'm too lazy to pull my break cue out of my bag). If I'm using my regular break cue, I normally use NIR on it as well. Most of the lighter blue spots are probably NIR too, although there might be some Blue Diamond mixed in here and there.

So there you have it. If you ever wondered whether your dishwasher might solve your dirty ball woes... chances are it won't.

PoolSynergy: Pre-Tournament Rituals

2011-03-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's the 15th of March already... and that means it's time for another episode of:

PoolSynergy is a blog carnival where several pool bloggers conspire together each month to write about a common topic. Charles Eames is this month's host and he suggested we discuss tips for tournament preparation.

Thinking through my preparation for major tournaments made me realize that even though I haven't been competing all that long, I've already developed several consistent rituals... and that in turn made me think about the value of rituals in general.

Unless you don't follow sports at all, you've undoubtedly heard of or even witnessed some of the pre-competition rituals that athletes have to 'prepare' themselves for the upcoming battle: some wear special clothes under their uniforms - Michael Jordan, for example, always wore his Tar Heels shorts under his Chicago Bulls uniform.

Countless athletes don 'lucky' underwear or socks under their uniform (the scary part is that many of these lucky garments are never washed... ever!)

Similarly, some athletes always wear the same or similar clothes on the way to a game. Marshall Faulk, for example, always wore black. Some wear special jewelry. Women athletes may do their makeup a certain way prior to competition which I suppose could be considered a matter of practicality in some cases, but probably goes beyond that for some. I've noticed that a friend polishes her nails in an unusual way prior to a big tournament, for example.

Many pro hockey players let their beards grow during playoffs.

Some athletes have been known to sleep in uniform items from the opposing team.

Some athletes get a little more physical: UFC fighter Georges St-Pierre tweaks his nipples shortly after he enters the ring. NFL player John Henderson elicits a slap from his trainer just before each game:

Athletes often eat a certain meal prior to competition. Chicken is popular (Wade Boggs and others). Various forms of pasta also seems to be popular. My high school football coach often organized spaghetti or lasagna dinners for the team the night before an important game.

The question is: do these rituals serve a useful purpose or are they just silly superstitions? Many would be hard pressed to find purpose behind the above examples. Sure, some might be justified one way or another - nutritional benefits of certain meals, for example... but ritual meals are rarely considered to be optimum sports nutrition.

There are rituals that have more readily identified purpose, of course. I always put extra care into preparing my equipment before a major competition, for example... making sure I have enough chalk, my tips are in good shape, shafts smooth, etc. In my football days, I was a ball handler and therefore always got my ankles taped before games to prevent ankle injuries and so on. These rituals obviously have more identifiable purpose, but I intentionally avoided such rituals in the examples above.

The question is: What benefit, if any, do we derive from rituals that seemingly do not have a direct, concrete purpose?

Having competed in numerous sports over the years, I'm very familiar with pre-competition rituals... but I'll admit I never put much thought into potential 'real' benefits even though I took (and thoroughly enjoyed) a couple of psychology courses in college.

That is, until I ran across a discussion on the subject it in Jack Koehler's Upscale Nine-Ball. It hit me like a ton of bricks, actually.

Made. Perfect. Sense.

I'll assume most of us are at least reasonably familiar with the differences between left-brain and right-brain processing. If not, check out one or more of the previously discussed 'mental' books on pool.

Understanding these differences is key to knowing the principles behind teachings such as being completely settled on how your shot will play out before getting down into the shooting stance, for example. Your conscious 'thinking' about the shot should then ideally yield to the subconscious routine of executing the shot.

Anyway, let me get to the point here. It's generally agreed that pool is mostly a mental sport. It therefore makes sense that you want your brain prepared and engaged to the greatest extent possible - particularly prior to an important match or tournament.

The left brain understands and processes language. It 'gets it' whenever you read a tournament flyer or an entry in your calendar... or talk to someone about an upcoming tournament. The right brain doesn't pick it up so easily, though. Since the right brain is attuned to sensory inputs - audible, visual, taste, etc... it gets its cues from things you're actually doing and experiencing and therefore rituals can give your right brain that 'heads up' that an important competition is on the horizon.

So bring on the rituals! (as long as no humans or animals are injured in the process)

Be sure to check out tournament prep tips from all the other PoolSynergy Blogologists.

Return to BullShooters

2011-03-07T00:05:00.000-08:00

I just got back from Phoenix where I competed in an APA Regional Qualifier for Singles Nationals, held at my previously disclosed favorite pool hall.

Overall, it was a great weekend. No, I didn't qualify for Nationals in 8-ball this year. I won several matches against some very good opponents and made to the semi-finals, then simply didn't play as well as I should have and lost.

I didn't play horribly, mind you. I made some very tough shots and even had some decent safeties but I made a couple of errors at key moments and my opponent was more than competent enough to take advantage.

After the match, she remarked "I made her think far too much for the first match of the morning."

I'm glad my strategy and safety play was appreciated.

Overall, I have mixed thoughts about the loss. Sure, I wanted to win... I pretty much always want to win. But since I'm already qualified for Nationals in 9-ball, I didn't have to win. And, I'll admit that I was wondering what it'd be like to juggle both 8-ball and 9-ball at Nationals. Sure, people do it... but I don't know how effectively.

In the end I think I'll probably be better off putting 110% into 9-ball at Nationals than 80% into both 8-ball and 9-ball. And that's the plan.

Two Balls One Hole

2011-02-26T15:23:00.000-08:00

Wow - this is only my third post this month, and the month is almost over. Sigh. Been busy, been a little sick, had sick kids... stuff happens. Mostly good stuff, though. Part of my busy-ness has been gearing up for upcoming tournaments as I mentioned in a previous post. As promised, I have a couple of follow-up posts to that one coming up soon.

What else? Let's see... I'm working towards LASIK surgery in the near future (specifically iLASIK). Yes, I believe the time has come. I've been watching the state-of-the-art in eye surgery evolve for decades now. My mom was an office manager for two of the leading eye surgeons in Reno back in the 80's and 90's so that was a good opportunity for me and we did in fact discuss it, but I didn't pull the trigger for various reasons. The technology has advanced significantly since then, enough so that the procedure I'm looking at is the first to be approved by the military and NASA for pilots and astronauts.

I've also been following the OMGWTF vs. Asia Cycak saga with moderate interest and amusement. If you have no clue what I'm talking about and feel left out, a couple initial posts about it are here and here. The drama is real and sad in many ways, but it serves as a good reminder that you need to watch your back with some of the folks out there. The whole thing also reminded me of a recent article in the Vegas Billiards Buzz. Kudos to OMGWTF for her usual journalistic excellence on the subject. By the way, am I the only one thinking this might be an opportunity for a streamed grudge match in another medium... like Jello, mud, or oil? I'm sure I could come up with a venue for that here in Vegas. (did I just type that out loud?)

Anyway, back to the subject at hand... sometime last fall, shortly after I took over as captain of my Wednesday night 8-ball team, I sat down and read the APA Official Team Manual cover to cover. I didn't really expect to retain it all, but wanted to have a good idea of what was in there so I could refer to it when situations arise. I remember in particular a passage at the top of page 48 (part of the 'Pocketed Balls' section that began on the previous page): "It occasionally happens on tables with small pockets that two balls become jammed in a pocket and are leaning over the edge of the slate to some degree..."

Now, this is a cruel thing to slip into a book I'm reading. Why? Well, maybe it'd be helpful to know a couple of things about me: I currently work at a casino gaming machine manufacturer. We develop slot machines, slot accounting systems, player tracking systems, and so on. In other words, my current life is filled with probability and statistics math. As I read, part of my brain spun off a background process to calculate the odds of such an event happening.

Prior to getting into my current line of work, I was a nuclear reactor operator. Consequently, I'm very familiar with and even taught nuclear physics at a college level (at a Navy training facility). As you might guess, another part of my brain spun off a background process to figure out the physics involved in getting two balls jammed in a pocket during normal play. At some point, I believe one or both of those background processes attempted to divide by zero and my head about exploded.

Suffice it to say the odds are huge. Most people won't see it in their lifetime.

Well, it happened to one of the players on my Wednesday night team (Ron Worley) when he broke during his league match last Wednesday night, coincidentally at a bar I've blogged about before. Never a dull moment there I guess.

Several people witnessed it - players as well as onlookers with accumulated pool shooting experience totaling well into hundreds of years, and no one had seen it happen before.

PoolSynergy: Fav Pool Hall

2011-02-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone, and welcome to the February 2011 edition of...

PoolSynergy is a blog carnival where several pool bloggers join together and write about a common topic on the 15th of every month.

This month, our host... the most awesome G² asked us to write about our favorite pool hall, and I'll admit that I struggled a bit trying to decide what I'd consider to be my 'favorite' pool hall. There are hundreds of pool tables scattered throughout Las Vegas, but most of them are located in what I would consider to be bars more than pool halls. We do have a few halls, though.

The Las Vegas Cue Club is, as far as I know, the largest pool hall in Las Vegas. I haven't counted the tables there, but their website says they have 39 tables so I'll run with that number. They have a decent mix of Valley type bar boxes, Diamond bar boxes, several nine footers, a full size Snooker table, and even a funny-looking table that doesn't have any pockets.

This is the place we usually end up for larger tournaments due to the number of available tables, and I can't say that I mind playing there but I won't say I'm crazy about it either. The tables are fairly well maintained for the most part... although I've noticed some problems here and there. The overall room is pretty dark in places - enough so that many of the regulars have gotten in the habit of bringing lighted pens, flashlights, or clipboard lights for keeping score.

There is a small 'attached' snack bar that serves things like wings and sandwiches. The attached or adjacent grill/snack bar phenomenon is common amongst the bars in Vegas due to smoking laws that were passed a few years ago. I don't claim to be an authority on the law... but my understanding is that if a place sells food, it's supposed to be smoke free. Most if not all bars continue to cater to smokers, however, so they deal with the law by having a separate eating area. There are also a couple good restaurants within easy walking distance of the Cue Club (Mexican and Thai are two examples).

Mickey's Brews and Cues is one of the better halls in town... they have 24 tables total: ten 7' Diamonds, five 9' Diamonds and nine Gold Crowns. All tables are covered with Simonis cloth, use Aramith balls, and are well maintained. This is the largest pool hall near my house, so I've been there many times. Downsides here are they don't serve any food and the bar is limited to beer and wine. When hunger strikes, there is a pizza place and a couple other fast-food type joints within easy walking distance.

Pool Sharks is over on the west side of town - a bit more of a drive for me, so I don't get over there unless there's a tournament or other reason to go. I'm not sure how many tables they have, but I'm guessing it's similar in size to Mickey's. Last time I was there for a tournament, I did run into some issues with the tables - bad rails, and so on (others have noted problems as well). They don't offer much in the way of food there, but have several menus on hand from local eateries that deliver. Last time I was there, I walked to a nearby Asian Market to grab some lunch in between matches. [2/19 update - I just had a tournament here today, and there are 27 tables (maybe 28). I didn't do a careful survey, but I believe they had seven bar boxes (two of them were Diamonds)... I saw at least two 9' Diamonds, and the rest looked like 9' Brunswicks.]

As far as I know, that's about it for the "pool hall" category in Las Vegas. There are several bars that land in the 'in between' category because they have fewer tables than what I would call a 'pool hall,' but more than one or two... and it's clear that they're serious about pool and cater to more than just drunk ball bangers by the way they maintain their tables and support the league players.

Putter's Eastern has four well-maintained bar-sized Diamond tables, decent food available from the adjacent Angelina's Pizzeria (a waitress gladly comes over when requested to take your order and deliver your food). I've played league as well as tournaments there, and it's definitely one of my preferred locations in this category (this was the location I chose for the interview I did last monthy).

Rum Runner's hosts a number of local tournaments, has a dozen or so well maintained tables, and has some pretty darn good food available from an 'attached grill.' I've always had a good experience playing there. Their website lists more than one location, but the one I'm referring to is the Tropicana Avenue location.

Dealer's Choice has five tables, and I have to admit I haven't been there yet - I'm only listing it because it seems to be a popular place in town that hosts some decent teams.

Aces and Ales is another place I've heard good things about but haven't been to yet. I'm including it to round out the map of Las Vegas with some coverage up on the Northeast part of town.

While all of these are decent places, I couldn't single any of them out as being my favorite. Instead, I found myself comparing each of them to another hall I played at on the road a few months ago... and while the ones listed above definitely have their good points, they fell short of this one in one way or another. I found myself repeatedly saying "gee, I wish we had something like that one in town."

And so, I reveal my pick for favorite pool hall:

My first experience at Bullshooters was at an APA Regional Qualifier last fall. At 19,000 square feet, it's a bit bigger than The Cue Club. It has 45 tables: thirteen 8 footers, sixteen 9 footers, and sixteen 7 foot bar boxes.

I played on several of the tables (of all sizes) and found all of them to be well maintained. But running a great pool hall takes more than just throwing a bunch of well maintained pool tables into a big room and I get the feeling the owners (Mike & Julie Bates and Leonard Orlando) understand that. The tables were spaced well enough that I didn't feel overly crowded. The lighting was good. Smoking was confined to a patio area near the front of the hall. Music was good. There was a reasonable amount of seating (chairs and tables) scattered amongst the pool tables to give players, scorekeepers, and onlookers a place to sit, drink and eat.

Beyond just playing pool, I enjoyed the atmosphere there because I didn't feel packed in like I've felt many times in tournaments here in Las Vegas. The food was great and the service was genuinely friendly - they made me feel like family. Beyond the regular menu, there were a few nice 'extra touches' available on the counter such as homemade beef jerky and rice crispy treats.

As my tournament played into the later hours in the semi-final and final rounds, a very sizable crowd started filtering in. Again comparing to Vegas halls, I was a little surprised to see such a crowd! But it became apparent that they weren't just coming for pool, because Bullshooters isn't just another pool hall. It's a place to hang out, have food and drinks, play darts, pool, karaoke, and more. They've really found a good mix and it shows.

I recently found out that I'll be returning to Bullshooters for another APA Regional Qualifier in a couple of weeks and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm hoping I do as well in 8-ball as I did in 9-ball last fall!

Be sure to check out the other PoolSynergy postings.

Going Mental

2011-02-09T00:37:00.000-08:00

I've got a few largish tournaments in the near future: first up is the APA 8-ball Classic Singles Regional Finals in Phoenix the first week of March. This tournament is a qualifier for the APA 8-ball Classic Singles National Championships, which I competed in last year.

Next up is the Southwest Challenge (8-ball) here in Las Vegas at The Riviera. The Southwest Challenge is a fun format - teams of three with a total skill level cap of 14 (the 9-ball version of the tournament, played in the fall, has a skill level cap of 15). For this tournament, you have to declare the roster order when entering so there isn't any control over individual player match ups during the tournament. As a result, it's not uncommon to see top rated players playing against beginners - and with the APA handicapping system, the beginners can be a challenge to anyone.

At the end of April is the APA Singles National Championships. I'm already qualified for the 9-ball Shootout at this event after winning the Regional Finals last fall. A win (or even second place) next month in Phoenix would qualify me to compete in the 8-ball Classic as well. Since the 8-ball and 9-ball events run pretty much concurrently at Nationals, I have mixed feelings about taking both on. I'll be well warmed up, that's for sure!

There are a couple local annual tournaments coming up that I'm also considering entering, so needless to say I'm going to get my fill of higher level tournament action over the next few months!

My plan of attack in preparing for these tournaments is to focus primarily in three areas: the mental game, simplification, and safeties. To start things off, I'm making another pass through my 'mental' books.

As I mentioned in my December PoolSynergy post, Pleasures of Small Motions is one of my top gift recommendations - it's well written, a fairly quick read, and ideal for an occasional mental tune up. Of course I wouldn't be giving the book for gifts unless I found it useful myself. I've already read this book cover to cover a couple of times, and it's back in my queue for another pass as soon as I finish what I'm currently reading... A Mind for Pool.

In this book, well-known pool author Phil Capelle covers the mental aspects of pool from just about every angle imaginable. It's a very thorough book, covering everything from getting started to dealing with the pressure of competition.

Of course there's much more to pool than simply dealing with the pressure of competition, so Phil makes many stops along the way to discuss things such as: being a good student of the game, self evaluation, breaking bad habits, keys to consistency, dealing with distractions, learning from losing, and enjoying the game.

I'm truly amazed at the number of people I see on a regular basis that get so incredibly wound up during a match. I can't help but think it hurts their game more than it helps. Sure, there are a few examples of pro hot-heads out there, but even then I dare say they're probably more controlled when it counts than they appear to be. They might spout off in between shots, but they're usually able to quickly turn it off and refocus when they're down on the next shot. If they weren't able to do that, they probably wouldn't have achieved the level of success that they have.

But on the other hand, it's entirely possible that they could have achieved even greater success if they were able to keep things under control a bit better. Consider The Color of Money (the match, not the movie) - a long, grueling, high stakes race to 120. Two incredibly gifted shooters... but the winner in the end was the one who did a better job keeping it together mentally, erasing a 15 game deficit for the come-from-behind win.

I'll be discussing my other two areas of focus - simplification and safeties in future posts... stay tuned.

Blind Scotch

2011-01-29T23:29:00.000-08:00

OK, I think I've coined a new term using the "blind date" analogy. Blind Scotch is hereby defined as going into a scotch doubles tournament without a partner and matching up with whomever you can find similarly standing around, available, and looking for a partner. I did that today - and while we didn't finish in the money, I met someone new, had a good time, and think we did respectably well.

Today's 8-ball Scotch Doubles tournament at the Las Vegas Cue Club kicked off the new season for the Vegas Billiards Tour. As mentioned in previous posts, I joined the tour last year because I knew there were a lot of really good players in town that I wasn't getting exposed to. I felt rubbing shoulders with them at least once a month would help me improve, and I have to say that it has. Even though I didn't join the tour until Stop #4 last year, I accumulated enough points to finish in the top 25% or so of the standings and qualified for the final event at the end of the year. My goal, of course, is to do even better this year!

Unlike most of the Vegas Billiards Tour events, this stop was un-handicapped... relying solely on the skill level cap to keep the teams reasonably well matched. My partner and I fell a couple points short of the cap, but I think we were close enough to be in the mix. We got off to a rocky start, dropping the first match 4-2 (the race was to 4 on the east side of the bracket and 3 on the west side). I don't think we were all that out-gunned, we each just made a couple mistakes at critical times and perhaps more importantly played a team that appeared to be very familiar with each other's play. My partner and I were obviously at the other end of the spectrum in that regard, having only met minutes before and not even getting much chance to warm up together prior to the start of the tournament.

On the west side of the board, things came together for us and we rolled up a strong 3-0 victory in the first match. Our second match on the west side was against a strong team comprised of the 2010 Vegas Billiards Tour Champion paired up with Ms. oN a miSsioN (who assured me she'd make another post soon so I'm helping her out by putting it on the record).

It was a tough match, going hill-hill, with a defensive deadlock endgame in the last game. Their last ball was blocking a corner pocket, but we had a ball snugged up close to it so they weren't able to sink it from the vast majority of the table without fouling and likely giving us the game and match. We had another ball on the table that we were able to poke around defensively, allowing us to continue making legal hits. I think overall we had the upper hand at that point, but we all knew that it'd come down to whoever made the first mistake.

Unfortunately, my partner fouled while attempting to position our free ball for a breakout on the other ball... giving them ball-in-hand and the victory. He commented that we was glad that he was the one that made the mistake, and since he was the stronger player on our team I can understand his point - he didn't want it to end on a sour note for me, and I appreciate that. Overall, I was happy with our play, and I'd have no problem playing with him again. I got the feeling that he felt the same way, so it's all good.

Oh, and I learned something else today - bloggers live in glass houses - LOL. Shortly after my last match, a very observant onlooker (and good friend) declared that I was guilty of using my old rail bridge as opposed to my new rail bridge for at least one of my shots (not a break shot, since we were following BCA rules and I was therefore opting to break from just off-center of the head string rather than my usual spot near the side rail). The comment was well received, of course. I guess the new bridge isn't quite ingrained yet, and the old one came out in the heat of the moment. I'm pretty sure I made the shot anyway, but I definitely need to queue up some more practice to get that old bridge out of my system.

Them's the Breaks

2011-01-21T23:44:00.000-08:00

We are only three weeks into the Spring season for APA and I actually haven't even played many matches in these opening weeks but so far I've managed to log three 9-ball "snappers" during league 9-ball matches and one 8-ball break during an 8-ball match. Time will tell if the trend continues, of course, but needless to say I've been pretty happy with my break lately.

The 8-ball break is particularly significant since it's the first one I've done in a long time (6 months, maybe?) due to pretty much abandoning attempts for intentional 8-ball breaks during that period of time. I stopped trying them because aiming at the second ball in the rack tends to be a riskier shot - it's fairly easy to scratch either by pocketing the cue ball or by hitting the cue ball off of the table. I was getting a good spread and pocketing balls more often than not with a 'normal' break, so I opted to reduce my risk and stick with that.

So what's changed recently? Well, after chatting a bit with Sondra Friestad earlier in the month, I realized it had been some time since I dedicated much more than perfunctory practice on my break. While very little of our discussion about breaking and break practicing made it into the edited version of the interview, she and I talked at length about the importance of a good break and how so few seem to dedicate time to practicing such a critical shot.

We were in complete agreement during that discussion because I remembered doing nothing but breaking for hours on end for a period of time about a year and a half ago... my kids ducking for cover and calling me names every time I sent the cue ball into the family room where they were... but I made some big improvements; got my power dialed up to a reasonable level, and got to the point that dry breaks were more the exception than the rule.

As a result of that intensive practice period, I've got a fairly strong break. I generally clock in at or just under 20 MPH as measured by the iPhone Break Speed app, which I think is pretty respectable. Once I got to the point that I was satisfied with my break, I more or less put it on the back burner while working on other areas of my game. (Hat tip to Michael Reddick for turning me on to the Break Speed app)

After my discussion with Sondra, I decided it was about time to circle back around and focus on my break again for a bit. Since I'm generally satisfied with the power of my break, I decided to put some time into improving my accuracy.

Probably the biggest factor in increasing my accuracy was an improved bridge, particularly when breaking from the side rail as I often do in both 9-ball and 8-ball. The bridge I used to use was a simple two-finger bridge as shown in the first picture to the left. Basically, the shaft glided over the felt on the rail and was loosely guided by my index and middle fingers.

While it's not apparent in the picture, the palm of my hand is elevated and no part of my hand (other than the two fingers) come in contact with the shaft. This is a fairly common rail bridge, but not a particularly stable one. It's extremely easy to move the tip side-to-side by moving the butt of the cue side-to-side, for example.

My improved bridge is shown at right. Notice how I've tucked my thumb underneath and laid it next to the shaft. The shaft now slides alongside my thumb and middle finger, and my index finger actually serves to snug the shaft up against my thumb and middle finger. This seemingly minor change results in a huge gain in lateral stability of the shaft.

With the old bridge, my fingers were only in contact with about 1/2 inch or at most an inch of the shaft (lengthwise) and they created a simple pivot point. I could easily move the butt of the cue side-to-side to freely move the tip side-to-side. With the newer bridge, my thumb and middle finger come in contact with about four inches of the shaft which eliminates the simple pivot point... I get much more resistance when I try to move the butt of the cue side-to-side. This bridge, in addition to some recent concentrated practice, has definitely improved my aim to the point that I'm much more confident in getting a good hit on the second ball (which is generally considered to improve your chances of sinking the 8-ball on the break).

The Agony of Defeat

2011-01-17T02:32:00.000-08:00

(PoolSynergy: Team Play Epilogue)

I found it interesting that the PoolSynergy "Team Play" post was released on the weekend of one of our APA 8-ball Classic Tri-Annual team tournaments.

For those who don't know, the APA has three 'seasons' per year - Spring, Summer, and Fall. At the end of each season, tournaments are held for the best 8-ball and 9-ball teams from the season. These tournaments serve as a nice close to the season and are also used as part of the qualifying pipeline to determine which team(s) will be representing a given area at the National Team Championships held in the fall. I imagine there are some regional variations on the theme, so keep in mind that I'm describing how it works here in the Las Vegas area - your mileage may vary.

As the name suggests, tri-annual tournaments are held three times a year. Each team making it to playoffs in their respective divisions earns a spot in the tri-annual tournament. The winner of the tri-annual tournament advances to the annual cities tournament, which is the tournament that determines the team(s) going to team nationals. The first place team in each divisional playoff also earns a berth in the annual cities tournament.

My Monday 9-ball team as well as my Wednesday and Friday 8-ball teams made it to tri-annuals this season. Unfortunately, all three teams lost in the first round.

My Wednesday night team (the one I'm captain of) was the most recent loss so it's freshest in my mind. It was a heartbreaking loss that literally went down to the last match, last game, last ball. My player was left with a very difficult cross-over bank shot into the side pocket. He appeared to have executed it perfectly and the 8-ball headed towards center pocket. Unfortunately, the cue ball rebounded off the end rail with perfect timing, speed, and direction to deflect the 8-ball from its original path just before it reached the pocket... resulting in a miss and leaving his opponent a fairly easy shot for the win.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this particular loss was that I honestly think we were the better team... and I'm not saying that just because it's my team. I think anyone who has been playing this game for awhile can tell the difference between flat out being out-gunned and losing a match that you really should have won. This one, in my mind at least, was clearly the latter situation. We started off in good shape with me taking one of their top two players out of the equation... and then we struggled. Scratches, poor positions at critical times, etc. Uncharacteristic things that wouldn't happen 8 or 9 times out of 10... but they happened with regularity that we couldn't overcome in the end, and all added up to an eventual loss for us.

It's human nature to walk away from something like that wondering what we did wrong - and I think it's healthy both as a team and as individuals to do a little self-evaluation to figure out where improvements can be made for next time... as long as it's done constructively. If you're not careful, you can "what if" yourself to death and lose confidence as a result... confidence in yourself, and in the team. Don't do that unnecessarily! Perhaps the worse thing you can do is to contribute to teammates losing confidence in themselves, as Melinda pointed out in her PoolSynergy post.

It's one thing to recognize and deal with a problem if you really have a problem. Yes, sometimes that's necessary, and it can be a fine line at times. But a loss doesn't automatically mean you have a problem. You will always lose... at least once in a while. Obviously, the key is to keep those losses to a minimum.

Like most sports, pool is a game of percentages. If you have the data available, you can assign probabilities to every match, every game, every shot, and every safety. I live in Las Vegas and work for a gaming company. I'm very familiar with odds making and probability. All you can do is play the percentages to give yourself the best chance of success. We've all heard it: choose and shoot the highest percentage shots, play safe when you don't have a high percentage shot. With a team, go with the highest percentage match ups (if the format allows, of course). Problem is, there is pretty much nothing in pool that carries a probability of 100% and sometimes things just don't go your way.

I had and still have full confidence in the lineup I chose today. I feel we had good odds with every single match up, and I'd be perfectly comfortable using the same lineup tomorrow against the same team. That said, this is the first time I've ever seen our opponents play so there's a possibility I'd use the newly-gained knowledge to make an adjustment or two next time around... but nevertheless I stand by my assertion that I'd be comfortable playing them the exact same way.

We have a strong team, and we'll do well in the long run as long as we keep things positive and continue to grow together as a team. We're already qualified for the annual cities tournament as a result of taking first place in our division last season, so we didn't need the tri-annual win for that reason. Sure, it would have been nice... but the tournament experience was good and I'll consider it a warm-up for the cities tournament.

Onward and upward!

PoolSynergy: Team Play

2011-01-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

Back in September I suggested the "Team Play" theme to my fellow PoolSynergy writers after noting the dearth of instructional materials covering the team aspect of pool. I was looking for tips on team play because I had just taken over as captain of an APA 8-ball team and found, as you might suspect, that the vast majority of information in print and online focuses on the individual aspects of playing pool. A good number of players compete in a team environment, however, and I felt some coverage on this aspect of pool would be very well received... and my fellow bloggers wholeheartedly agreed!

They agreed so much, in fact, that they elected me to be the host of the theme - WTF!? So here I am, and here we are... and as usual, we have a great lineup of posts related to Team Play:

p00lriah tried to convince me that he wasn't a team player. ha! i didn't believe him for a minute of course, and he proved me right by pulling through for the poolsynergy team by once again being the first person to submit his article! way to go p00lriah! i don't know how he does it... perhaps it's the efficiency gained from not using the shift key? read on as he makes a spectator of himself.

Melinda (akaTrigger), who very modestly describes herself as "a pool player from Texas" (maybe because Texas Tornado was already taken) bares her soul with some painful memories from a BCAPL championship run long ago in hopes that she can teach what NOT to do as a captain.

Jake Dyer, our resident pool historian, dips into his substantial pool of knowledge to highlight some great players from the past (and present) who may, ummm, struggle in a team environment. He also shares a great potential future direction for team play. Check out his post here.

Gail (aka G Squared) takes on the Team Play topic Letterman style with not one but two Top Ten lists to help feed the team player in YOU. Unlike Letterman's lists, Gail's are good for much more than laughs! Join me as we take a close look at her genes to see what makes a top-notch team player tick.

John Biddle, award-winning Pool Student and our esteemed founder of PoolSynergy, shares his thoughts on the Benefits of Team Play.

St. Louis Johnny, the only person I know who has successfully launched a cue tip over 50 feet, feels team captains can take a lesson from Dalton. No, not Shannon Dalton, the "I thought you'd be bigger" Dalton, but the character played by Patrick Swayze in Road House. He has a simple but effective motto: "Be nice"

John Barton, of JB Cases, brings an international flair into the PoolSynergy fold by sharing his experiences of team play in Germany. "Despite being thought of as an individual sport, pool does provide a great binding platform for people to enjoy it competitively as a team." Check out John's experiences and thoughts here.

Billiard Coach Mike Fieldhammer lends a bit of a philosophical view to Team Play with an evaluation of intangible rewards of being on a proper team.

And wrapping up this month's collection of articles is my own contribution to the theme in which I discuss some thoughts and observations about general team dynamics before moving on to an interview of the captain of the 2010 ACS Women's Open 8-ball Championship team.

PoolSynergy: The Making of a Championship Team

2011-01-15T06:55:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone, and welcome to my edition of...

This month, I'm the host for Volume 15!

Even as I originally proposed this month's PoolSynergy topic back in September, I knew that it'd be best to reach out to someone else who had more experience and success with pool in a team environment. The plain fact was that I didn't (and still don't) have a whole lot of experience with pool from a team perspective.

Through my own observations and experience in several other team sports, I was well aware that a coach (or captain) can make or break a team. We've seen time after time that some coaches manage to mold a group of average players into a championship team while other coaches fall short... despite having more individual talent available to them.

Being the leader of a team is more of an art than a science. You need to know the sport well, of course... the rules, the strategies, and so on but I think that's the easy part; the part that many people can learn (although it's clear some don't put in the effort to do so). The hard part, in my opinion, is to bring the players together as a cohesive unit to properly execute the strategies. This is where psychology and sociology come into play. Team dynamics.

As a coach or captain, you need to know your players' personalities, capabilities, and needs. Every player is different. Some like to be cheered on, some don't. Some perform better under pressure than others. Some play well against players of the opposite sex and some don't. Some will openly tell you when they're not confident with a situation and some won't. Some of the players who tell you they're not comfortable with a situation will kick butt in that situation anyway... while others will leave you wishing you heeded their warning. Some players need more warm up time than others. Some are fine with going up first, some aren't. These are just a few examples of the many, many factors that a good coach or captain will be 'tuned' into - and don't expect your players to tell you their thoughts or even the truth about some of these things. I'm not suggesting they'd intentionally lie to you (although some might in certain situations), but their perception can differ from reality. By all means, get their input as appropriate, but that alone will rarely be the only factor on which you base a decision.

I believe the 'art' side of coaching is very difficult to teach or learn in the usual sense, but developing an awareness of subtle factors like the ones I mention above is a good step in the right direction. Great coaches often know their players better than the players know themselves and use that knowledge to lead their team to success. The very best coaches extend this 'sixth sense' beyond their own team to players on opposing teams as well.

Anyway, back to my original point about wanting to seek out wisdom from others who have been successful with pool teams, I'm very fortunate to have access to a few folks in the local Las Vegas area that fit that description. I was extremely fortunate that a real gem amongst those folks, Sondra Friestad, agreed to spend some time discussing her thoughts on the care and feeding of a championship team:

Be sure to check out all of the other great January PoolSynergy articles!

Why Do I Miss?

2010-12-27T19:51:00.000-08:00

I'm at the stage of my game that I'm really trying to work on my consistency. I can make shots. I can (and have) made extremely difficult shots like razor-thin cuts from the length of the table and so on... shots that usually prompt TV commentators to predict an upcoming safety. If I'm focusing well, I can sink corner-to-corner-dead-straight-object-ball-in-the-middle-of-the-table shots with high regularity. But yet, I miss shots that I shouldn't more often than I'd like to. So, like many other pool players out there, I'm making a concerted effort to to improve my percentages on 'basic' shots. By 'basic' I mean shots where the cue ball and/or object ball do not hit a rail or another ball. I'm talking about straight-in shots or varying degrees of cut shots. No banks, kicks, caroms, billiards, etc... just the basics.

So, back the original question - why do I miss? Simple question, amazingly complex answer. Any number of things can result in missing a given shot. Unless you know exactly which factor caused you to miss, it's pretty much impossible to correct the problem directly... so the general approach to improving at shot making usually focuses on improving upon the factors most likely associated with inconsistent play and missed shots. For purposes of simplification, I've decided to group the various 'miss factors' into three categories:

Stroke. With little doubt, a smooth consistent stroke is the primary foundation to excelling at pool. You can be a genius at angles, theory, and strategy; but if you can't hit the cue ball consistently, your play will most likely plateau at some level (actual level may vary, but probably below where you'd like). In my attempt at simplified categorization, I consider the stroke to be comprised of several elements including stance, bridge, grip, arm position, follow-through, and so on. In other words, I consider the stroke to be pretty much everything leading up to and including consistently hitting a cue ball exactly where you want to hit it. I've put quite a bit of time into working on my stroke and while there's always room for improvement, I think I've got it to a level that it's usually not a significant factor in my misses (or if it is, I usually know because the shot felt wrong). Because the stroke is so important, it's discussed at length in numerous books, DVDs and other resources. One of my favorite DVDs on the subject is in the set I recommended earlier this month. As I mentioned in my recommendation, the entire first DVD of the set is dedicated to a "perfect stroke." Another DVD that does a good job of discussing stroke fundamentals is Max Eberle's Powerful Pool.

Aim. For my purposes, I consider 'aim' as being the process or act of determining where the cue ball needs to go in order to make a given shot. To me, successfully delivering the cue ball to the point of aim is more a function of the 'stoke' category discussed above... but I certainly agree there's overlap between the two. Aim influences proper body alignment for a successful shot, for example. What I'm really trying to isolate in this category is what many people call "aiming systems" which is one of the current areas of focus in my own game. Improving my stroke definitely improved my game, but I still have some unexplained misses that I can't attribute to stroke problems (or other problems, below), so I'm not entirely certain I'm aiming properly on all shots. Therefore, I've decided to embark on a review of the various aiming systems out there to see if there's something useful that I'm not currently using.

And just what am I using? Good question. I more or less started out with the ghost ball system as I imagine most people did. Through practice, drills, and experience I've developed more of a 'feel' system that a lot of more experienced players develop over time. Yes, I've been able to walk up to a table and pound a long back-cut into a blind pocket without even thinking about it, so I know I have some amount of 'feel' aiming brewing inside me... but the whole 'feel' thing is against my nature... I'm an engineer and therefore tend to seek out something more quantifiable; something I can actively troubleshoot and improve rather than something I just put faith into automatically improving though hours and hours of practice. The problem is, when a 'feel' shot goes wrong I have no quantifiable way of determining why... and that bothers me.

Although I've looked at many of these aiming systems before, I can't say that I've really done a deep dive to figure them out and perhaps more importantly try them out. That's going to be my project for the next few weeks or so. I expect it to keep me busy for awhile. There is some discussion of aiming systems in books and DVDs I already have, and there's also a wealth of information online. Dr. Dave has a page dedicated to aiming, and several of Bob Jewett's Billiards Digest articles discuss aiming systems as well. While reading one of the articles, I ran across a reference to a book entitled "The Secret of Aiming" by Randy Kukla. I wasn't able to find the book searching online, but I just happen to know a Randy Kukla who plays pool (quite well, by the way). The one I know doesn't live in Essexville, MI as Jewett's article stated, but I figured my odds were pretty good it was the same person. A quick email confirmed, and I should have a copy of his book in my hands soon. I'll ask him if he's willing and able to sell it to others as well in case anyone else is interested - please let me know if you are.

Beyond commercially available books and videos and/or Internet resources, there are several folks who advertise some sort of "secret aiming system training" in with fundamentals of pool classes that they offer. By no means a comprehensive list, a few such programs (in no particular order) are: Tom Simpson's "Beat People with a Stick" course, Stan Shuffett's PRO ONE, and Gene Albrecht's Perfect Aim. While I would absolutely love to attend one or more of these courses, it's probably not going to happen anytime in the near future due to higher priority things competing for my $$. I believe a couple of the programs offer or will offer DVDs showing their aiming systems, so I may look into those at some point.

If anyone has input regarding resources I should look into in the area of aiming, by all means drop me a comment!

Other. To be honest, I mainly tacked this category on as a catch all for the time being. I recognize that there are some other factors that can contribute to a miss. Equipment, table conditions, nerves, distractions, as well as quantifiable factors such as squirt, deflection, throw, and so on. I realize some of these factors (such as the last few) can and ideally should be factored into aiming systems, or at least considered during the aiming process... but for now I decided to keep them separate in order to simply things a bit. I'll revisit and expand upon many of these factors at some point in the future. [update] p00lriah made a huge point in a comment that I should have covered better in this section, and that is that you need to keep an even keel and treat every shot the same! Don't get tense on a money ball - and at the other end of the spectrum, treat every shot with respect... even the little simple plinkers. Thanks p00lriah!

13 Hours of Efren vs. Earl

2010-12-23T16:12:00.000-08:00

In-laws visiting and you need to sneak off to the back room now and then to unwind? Kids banging mercilessly on their new toys in a sugar-induced frenzy? Wife still giving you crap about the raw turkey because you thought you set the timer for three hours to remind you to baste it but instead you set the timer to turn ON the oven in three hours?

Go ahead, lock the door and relax. Here's 13 hours of Efren Reyes vs. Earl Strickland at Ridgway's in Hong Kong (1996). Bite-sized 10 minute segments. 9-ball. Winner breaks. Race to 120. $100,000 winner take all.

Happy Holidays. Enjoy.

Above is the first segment to get you going. The full playlist of all 87 clips is here.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-21T20:43:00.001-08:00

I got together with a few friends and cut a quick video card for all of you - enjoy!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

First. Ever. Double. Carom!

2010-12-16T22:26:00.000-08:00

League night last night; week #2 of playoffs for my Wednesday night APA 8-ball team.

As you may recall, my Wednesday night team is the one I took over as captain early in the season after the previous captain had a bit of a falling out with the rest of the team. We rolled to a strong 3-0 victory in the first week of playoffs, so this week would determine first place in the division. Our opponents were a strong, balanced team and I heard they came back from a 0-2 deficit in the previous week to win 3-2, so I definitely wasn't going to take them for granted.

Earlier in the week I was doing a little pre-match 'homework' on our upcoming opponents, and couldn't shake my curiosity about their comeback upset victory (in my opinion, anyway, having played each team at least a couple of times during the season). I wanted to know what happened! So... I picked up the phone and made a call to someone on the team they played the previous week. I didn't know this person extremely well, but I hoping well enough that they'd be open to having a bit of a chat. I figured "what was the worse that could happen" right? Anyway, my instincts were right, and we had a very pleasant conversation. I found out how the individual match ups went and so on... and I got a critical nugget of information about a new player on the team we hadn't seen before. "The kid's rated SL 5 but played like a 7" was the comment that grabbed my attention. "I don't think he missed a single shot, and beat one of our 6's pretty badly." Bingo. I was suddenly very glad I made that phone call.

Walking into the host bar prior to the match, it was pretty easy to spot the new guy. I've seen everyone else on the team before, so he was a new face obviously. But it was more than that. It actually reminded me of a typical bar scene from "Color of Money". Young, cocky, strutting around, obnoxious. Wonderful. I'll refer to our star as Wonderboy.

I lost the coin toss, and the other captain deferred to me to put up first. Having already anticipated this possibility, I had a good idea who I was going to put up - myself, or our strongest female player. After some further thought and a quick discussion with her, I decided to put myself up. The other team matched me up for an even race. I shot quite well overall. I had a couple pocket rattlers here and there, and blew position badly on my key ball once... but other than that, I must say it was a very solid match for me. While I was shooting, Wonderboy was all over the place... checking the line on numerous shots, making loud comments here and there... fidgeting back and forth at the edge of my peripheral vision while I was down on shots, loudly cheering my opponent on, and generally being far more obnoxious than the average (or even above average) league player. I'm not sure if he was trying to shark on purpose, or if that's just the way he was. It didn't matter. I won my first two games quickly and never really felt threatened throughout the match. In the third game, I missed a tough shot on the 8-ball and my opponent was able to run out. We jockeyed back and forth a bit, but I ended up on top in the end. One down.

An observation about Wonderboy. He was the one doing the coaching during timeouts. He was new to the team and a SL 5, yet he gave all the advice while the captain of the team, a very capable SL 6 who did the coaching in the past, looked on. Interesting.

Another observation about Wonderboy... he was drinking... a lot. Both beer and shots. Interesting.

After my match, we were up 1-0 and it was the other team's put up. I already decided I'd throw off with a SL 3 if they put up Wonderboy. They didn't. They put up their captain, a SL 6, so I put our SL 7 against him. A few games later, we were up 2-0.

Wonderboy was still drinking heavily. It was our put up, but Wonderboy was up at the table already thinking he was going to play. I put up a SL 2. Their captain freaked out for a second, then realized it was our put up and he could choose someone else... so he threw up a SL 3. Our SL 2 is a methodical player and she played very well. The match went hill-hill and she narrowly missed a shot on the winning 8-ball. Slow play and a hill-hill match gave Wonderboy plenty of time to down a couple more drinks. We were up 2-1 at this point, and very much in command.

It was their put up, and Wonderboy finally got the call. Much to his chagrin, I didn't throw up a SL 6 like he was expecting. I instead threw up our strongest SL 3 (the female I considered starting the night off with). Wonderboy was not happy about that and actually more or less called me a chicken (I don't remember the exact words he used, but they were slurred in any case). Of course, I could care less. All I knew is that we had to win one more match to take first place in the division... and although I actually liked the odds of our SL 3 beating him given the handicap advantage (and his condition), I was fine with saving our SL 6 for the last match (likely against an average SL 3, which was pretty much the best they had left in the house).

Our SL 3 played extremely well. Wonderboy played surprisingly well too, it was obvious that he had skills... but as expected, his brief periods of brilliant play were peppered with careless mistakes. The match went hill-hill and down to the 8-ball for both of them. Well, almost. Wonderboy scratched sinking his last ball to give our player ball in hand on the 8-ball and the victory. We won 3-1 with a well warmed up SL 6 in ready five for the last match if necessary. It was a sweet and solid win. It was especially satisfying to take out Wonderboy with a female SL 3.

Oh, the double carom thing. Midway through one of my games, I was trying to figure out how to deal with a semi-problem ball near a corner pocket more or less blocked by a couple of my opponent's balls. I studied the layout shown... (the balls aren't perfectly positioned, just trying to give you an idea of the layout). The 6-ball could not go directly in to the pocket and there were no caroms available off of either of the blocker balls into the pocket. But then it suddenly jumped out at me that a double carom off of both balls would not only go, it seemed like it'd go pretty darn easily as long as I hit it right. I'm fairly comfortable with caroms these days and won't hesitate to use them if it's the right shot to take. But a double carom? I've maybe slopped something like that in before, but never intentionally lined up for such a shot in a match. I did a quick ego-check just to make sure I wasn't getting too cocky or something, and my brain kept telling me that it was not only the best shot, it seemed to be a fairly high percentage shot with the blocking balls perfectly positioned. So I stroked and shot it. And my ball dropped beautifully center pocket. I heard Wonderboy mumble "not much you can do about luck like that" to my opponent... and I just smiled internally and lined up for my next shot. Life is good.

Pool Synergy: 'Tis the Season

2010-12-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays everyone, and welcome to the special holiday edition of...

This month, our lovely hostess Melinda asked that we write about our favorite pool related book and DVD with the thinking that they'd make good Christmas gifts (or gifts for any other occasion in the near future, for that matter).

As you may already know, I'm an avid reader and have accumulated a large library of books on various pocket billiard subjects including general technique as well as specific strategies for games such as 8-ball, 9-ball, etc. It's frankly very difficult to pick a single favorite book because there are so many good ones. If someone asked me for a suggestion, I'd probably dig a bit deeper about what they were looking for in order to narrow the field a bit before making a suggestion.

In thinking about what I was going to cover for this article, though, one book stood out for me in many ways - it's broadly applicable to pretty much anyone playing pocket billiards so you don't have to worry about knowing whether the person you're getting a gift for plays 8-ball, 9-ball, one-pocket, straight pool, or whatever... and, in my opinion, it won't be one of the first books a billiards player will buy themselves, so the odds are fairly good they won't already have it early in their billiards book collection process. It's also fairly inexpensive, so it makes a good stocking stuffer or something you can give to numerous people (like every member of your team if you're into that kind of thing). For the above reasons and others, I've already given it as a gift to more than one of my pool-playing friends.

For the reasons stated above and others, Pleasures of Small Motions is always one of the first pool-related books that comes to mind when someone asks me for recommendations. Few people will argue that there's a large mental component to the game of pool, and this book definitely helped me sort that out. Written by an avid pool player who also happens to be a psychotherapist with a Ph.D in philosophy, this book is obviously a labor of love by someone who knows what they're talking about (re: both pool and psychology). After seeing the subtitle "Mastering the Mental Game of Pocket Billiards," I expected it to cover things like attitude, confidence, focus, concentration, and so on... and indeed it does. In fact, it gave me a whole new understanding and appreciation for the word concentration. The book goes well beyond the obvious topics though, covering various aspects of the inner workings of the mind and body and how thoughts are translated into the mechanics of playing pool including what can go wrong and why. It also covers some things that I hadn't really considered, such as the importance of rhythm and proper separation of conscious and unconscious control. In my opinion, this book is an absolute must-read for any competitive pool player. And it shouldn't just be read once, it should be reviewed on a regular basis.

Like many others, I've discovered that DVDs are incredibly useful training aids in the sport as well. Pool is a sport of physical action, obviously, and you can't fully appreciate the various techniques from printed word alone, even with the accompanying drawings and photos. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be hundreds of thousands. It really helps to see things play out in video. There are several good videos out there, but I was asked to pick just one...

First off, I wish to acknowledge that my DVD selection might raise a few eyebrows given that it's produced by IPT and Kevin Trudeau. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you're wondering what could possibly be wrong with a DVD produced by an ex-car salesman, doctor-posing convicted felon who founded the International Pool Tour only to skip town without paying winners after a tournament in 2006 thereby landing a big sucker punch to the sport of pocket billiards that we still haven't recovered from? Maybe I just like living on the edge. Sifting through some of the background material on Kevin, I kept thinking to myself that there must be another side to these stories... until I ran across his clean desk policy and realized he's simply from some sort of alternate universe. Seriously? A company policy that requires everyone's desk to be perfectly clean at all times? How the heck do you get anything done with a perfectly clean desk? By the way, Kevin, your memos need some cleaning - I noticed several spelling and grammatical errors. You might consider consulting that dictionary you recommend in Policy #8.

Anyway, this isn't about Kevin Trudeau trying to peddle some sort of miracle cure, it's about learning how to shoot perfect pool from Mike Sigel... and in that context it's a great video in my opinion. It's also a heck of a steal (no pun intended) right now on sale for $11.95 at Seybert's Billiard Supply.

Several things impress me about this DVD set. It's very well organized into a series of progressive drills intended to perfect your stroke and shot making ability from the ground up... the entire first DVD is dedicated to perfecting the stroke. You don't even get to hit an object ball! These drills epitomize the myelin-producing deep practice discussed in The Talent Code. The second DVD focuses on shot making, and the third focuses on other aspects of the game. Also included is a set of cards summarizing the drills that you can stuff away in your cue case for reference at the pool hall. The first DVD alone is easily worth the sale price at Seybert's.

Sigel discusses a couple of things that some folks don't agree with (such as using outside English on every single cut shot) but he explains his reasoning and it's certainly up to the viewer to balance Sigel's methods and advice against that of others to find what works for them. One thing you'll discover about Sigel is that he really strives for consistency - not just in the usual things like stance and stroke and so on, but in other areas such as cue ball speed and English applied for given shots. Indeed, one of the drills is dedicated to developing a consistent 'default' cue ball speed. Siegel's approach is one of simplification - if you use an ingrained 'default' speed the vast majority of the time or if you always use the same English for every single cut shot (as examples), the amount of complexity that your brain must process to get an imprint of shot and cue ball behavior is significantly reduced.

Contrast that with players who are constantly varying the speed of their stroke, the amount of English applied, etc, etc. Their brains have to figure out how all of those different variables combine to produce varying degrees of squirt, throw, deflection, curve, etc. And if multiple variables change from shot-to-shot, it's nearly impossible to match up the change in behavior to the individual variables in a cause-and-effect basis. Even if you're not trying to figure it out consciously, your brain is trying to sort it out subconsciously.

With my background in software engineering, this focus on simplification really struck a chord with me. I know from experience that by far the most software bugs reside in the most complicated, mangled code. For that reason, the best programmers go out of their way to produce simple, clean, elegant code for a given solution. In the software world, simple is genius. This focus on simplification is clearly Sigel's key to consistent play. This DVD set is a good value all the way up to the list price of $59.95... and it's a complete no-brainer at Seybert's sale price.

Be sure to check out all the other great December PoolSynergy articles!

Quick Update

2010-12-07T21:19:00.000-08:00

I know all four of you have been sitting on the edge of your seats wanting to know how the APA season is wrapping up for me *cough* *cough* so I thought I'd give you a really quick update anyway.

Monday night is my 9-ball night and last night was our last night of the season. We were in first by a comfortable margin going into the night and had a decent (66-34) win, so I dare say we'll stay in first. I led off the night for us with a 14-6 win. 9-ball's been really good to me this season - not really sure why I'm doing significantly (and consistently) better in 9-ball than 8-ball, but I'm not going to complain. I lost only one match all season, and ended up #2 on the top shooter's list behind the guy who squeaked out a victory against me. He was undefeated going into this week (haven't heard how he did this week).

Wednesday night (8-ball) we won, but didn't win by enough to lift us out of the tie for third place. Unfortunately, we were tied with a team (I believe the only team in the division) that comes out ahead of us in a tiebreaker situation, so that dropped us out of the playoffs. In a somewhat odd twist of fate, we won the wildcard berth... so we're back IN the playoffs. Yes, pool gods exist, and they like fucking with us. We play this week against the first place team who we seem to have a handle on (we're undefeated against them, beating them in one of the matches 5-0). Hopefully the second place team (who we also do well against) will take out the third place team (who we struggle against). If things don't go to plan, we'll just have to cope... and we will!

Last Friday night (8-ball) we had a bye for the first round of playoffs since we were in first and it's a small division (only 4 teams). I guess some people actually do other things on Friday night? WTF? Anyway, I haven't heard who we play this Friday... but it's one team or the other. LOL

Sunday (Masters) we lost badly enough to cement our position in last place. What do they say? Oh yeah, it was a rebuilding season, that's it! We have some solid players, things just didn't go our way this time around.

There you have it. Back to regularly scheduled programming.

Hammer Week Wrap-Up

2010-11-29T01:24:00.000-08:00

Quick update from my last post. The week was a mixed bag. Monday night I won but the team as a whole struggled... we lost, and dropped to second place. With one more week to go, I think we're solidly in the playoffs though... and it's very possible that we could regain first place with a decent win this week.

Wednesday night, we all struggled. Most matches (mine included) went down to the wire in hill-hill races... but the pool gods just weren't on our side and our highly motivated opponents pulled out the majority of wins to tie us in third place in the overall standings. We're going to need a big win against the first place team just to stay alive. We are capable of a big win against these guys... we beat them 5-0 last time we went up against them.

Friday night, I won and we won. I actually played really well Friday night, sweeping my opponent in straight games. I was a little worried in the first game, because I broke dry and then watched as she nearly ran the table... missing position on the 8-ball by just a couple of inches (why couldn't I have that kind of luck on Wednesday night!!??) I took advantage and ran out, then managed to stay ahead of her in the subsequent racks as well.

The biggest news of the week is... I got a new computer! Yay me! I got tired of begging and borrowing my daughter's computer and/or surviving on my iPhone and grabbed a new desktop at Costco on Black Friday to replace my still ailing laptop. I've been poking at that darn laptop for over a month now, and tried just about everything I could short of a destructive tear down and rebuild. I saw a decent deal on a desktop and figured that was the best way to support the pending destructive tear down and rebuild. Now all I have to do is suck the data off the laptop's hard drive and I'm golden even if I'm never able to resurrect the darn thing. I'm actually in good shape anyway, all of my really important stuff is backed up.

I hope everyone (in the US) had a great Thanksgiving... and now it's on to double hammer time for the last week before playoffs!

Hammer Time!

2010-11-24T13:23:00.000-08:00

Another APA season is coming to a close, and of course that means playoffs and tournaments. All of my teams are in line for both at this point - at the beginning of the week my Monday night 9-ball team was in first place in their division, my Wednesday night 8-ball team is currently in second place, my Friday night 8-ball is in first, and my Sunday Master's team is in second place.

The races in some divisions are tighter than others... I feel pretty good about the Monday and Friday teams; a bit nervous about my Wednesday team because it's my baby - I took over as captain earlier in the season. It's a very solid team, but the race between the top five teams is extremely close and we're wrapping up the season against two very good teams. This week, we play a team that managed to sweep us 5-0 earlier in the season. I wouldn't say they're better than us overall, just got the right match ups and got the rolls, etc. It was one of those nights. Tonight is our chance to respond!

Next week, we play the team that's currently in first place in the division. Coincidentally, we managed to sweep them 5-0 earlier in the season, so I'm sure they're thinking the same things about us that we're thinking about tonight's team!

Good luck to everyone else out there wrapping up their season(s) as well - finish strong!

Also, to my US readers - I hope you have a very happy (and safe) Thanksgiving. And if you happen to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade... I feel the need to have a quick "proud parent moment" and point out that my son will be in it this year, marching and playing the euphonium in the Green Valley High School Marching Band.

He claims he'll be the one that trips and falls in front of 50 million TV viewers - LOL. I'm sure he'll do fine, but if someone does trip, I'll state for the record now that it wasn't him (even if it was).

PoolSynergy: Three Handy Shots

2010-11-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been two whole weeks since my last post. It's amazing how quickly time flies when you're sick and your computer is dead. But it would take more than that for me to miss the special first anniversary edition of PoolSynergy, so I loaded up with a triple dose of Nyquil, booted my daughter off her computer and here I am! Her YouTube, Daily What, and U.S. Government homework can wait... it's MY turn damn it, and I built this computer in the first place - so HAH!

Now I have to hurry up and madly hammer this out before the Nyquil kicks in and I ZzzzZzzzzzz.

For this month's edition of PoolSynergy, John chose to go with the theme of "Three Tips" and after he very nicely explained to me that he was talking about three hints and not three tips such as the Moori, Tiger Sniper (my old favorite), and Tiger Onyx (my new favorite) I wandered off into my corner to figure out what I could possibly write about. Something GOOD. I mean "don't miss your shots," "don't scratch," and "don't hook yourself" seem kind of obvious (and short).

OK, I admit those were my backup plan in case I had to do the whole article from my iPhone. But I've commandeered a real computer so I'm going to do three real tips! And since I also listed my emergency backup tips, you get a sweet 2-for-1 deal on tips today and it's not even Black Friday yet!

Alright, the Nyquil is starting to kick in (which will be my excuse for any lame humor that appears in this post) so I need to get back on track. It actually took me awhile to come up with the three tips I was going to cover. Most of the other authors jumped on good ones before I could stake my claim (be sure to check the others out) so I had to dig a little deeper. I pondered some about what made me ME... and realized that I tend to use unique, creative shots more often than a lot of others do. While others get perfect shape shot after shot and sink everything (yawn), I'm the one who screws up shape just so I can pull some jaw-dropping crazy shot out of my ass. And then, of course, while the thrill is still fresh in the crowd's mind I miss an easy straight-in shot on the money ball and slink away to my chair. Or at least that's the way it seems during some matches.

But it is true that I use unique shots at times. Most of them aren't rocket science but as I mentioned, I often don't see them used when the opportunities present themselves to other players. Of course... once you know a shot and have practiced it a bit, it's easier to recognize the opportunities when they come up. It's like the old adage "when you have a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail."

I'm of the opinion that having as many tools available as possible is a Good Thing (tm). I mainly get ideas for shots from books like 99 Critical Shots in Pool and Byrne's Complete Book of Pool Shots. Another good resource for different types of shots is Dr. Dave's excellent Video Encyclopedia of Pool Shots (VEPS).

So without further ado, here are the three shots I've selected as being not quite so typical but definitely handy when the situations arise.

The first seems like a no-brainer but I'm amazed at the number of people who will gladly trade off an easier straight-on shot on the current shot for much poorer position on the following shot. Take a bit of time to practice off the rail shots, they're not that tough!

Slightly less obvious, but very handy nonetheless is the Ticky shot. Again, it really isn't a very difficult shot to do with just a little bit of practice.

Being able to roll a ball in after another ball can be extremely handy! I've used it numerous times to drop my ball in after an opponent's blocker ball, or dropping in two of my balls in one shot, or even in game winning situations. Again, this really isn't a tough shot once you get a feel for it with a little bit of practice.

A slightly different approach is required when your object ball is close to the blocker ball.

And there you have it, three handy shots to add to your repertoire if they're not already there. Shoot straight, and kick some butt out there people!

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T16:20:00.000-07:00

Things have been crazy for me the last week or two, sorry I haven't posted. First off, my computer is currently ailing... immediate blue screen on startup... not sure what's going on with THAT. I haven't had a chance to diagnose/fix yet, but my guess is one of the ever-so-helpful automatic updates killed it. Hopefully I'll get it fixed soon, but it'll have to wait until after my trip to Disneyland over the next few days.

I'm looking forward to the break, actually... and I think it might even do me some good to take a break from pool for a couple of days. I've been pushing it pretty hard lately, with a lot of (deep) practice and a lot of playing as well. Friday night was one of my APA league nights (8-ball)... and before that, I put in over an hour of working on my break. After my league match (which I won), I held the practice table for three hours. Unfortunately, with all that playing and practicing... in particular the break practicing... I woke up Saturday morning with a very stiff/sore upper back and right shoulder. Even more unfortunately, I had a tournament to play on Saturday!

The tourney was an "end of tour" 8-ball tournament for a local tour. Only people who had acquired enough points were able to participate. In the first round, I drew one of the best players on the board. Even though this was a handicapped event, he didn't have much problem beating me. His race was to five, and he had two break-and-runs on his breaks. Fortunately, the format was alternating break so I was able to get to the table a few times. My breaks were working well, dropping two and three balls each time until the last break... which gave me a very good spread all the way back to the head of the table but came up dry. Yeah, you know where this is headed, right? He ran out to finish off the match.

For my next match, I drew another very good player... rated the same as the first and playing well, but maybe not quite as well as the first. He had the first break... broke dry, and this time *I* nearly ran out. The Diamond pockets tightened up a bit on me for my long shot on the 8-ball and left it in the jaws. I was able to get it in the next inning. We went hill-hill, and had to break up a spot cluster off of a shot into the side pocket. I nailed the shot and nailed the cluster break... but unfortunately the 8-ball got deflected into the corner pocket as a result of the cluster break for the loss. Tough 'break' so to speak. I had checked the cluster prior to the shot and verified that it wasn't going to go directly in, but can't anticipate deflections like that. Overall, I was very happy with my play even though they were losses... considering I was playing two of the best players in Vegas, and with a sore back to boot!

I'll be back after I get back from Disney! Happy trick-or-treating everyone!

The Rise... and Fall!

2010-10-21T22:52:00.000-07:00

Ugh - t'was an awesome week last week and a lousy week this week. I'm still trying to figure out why but no obvious answers come to mind, so I think I'm just going to chalk it up to "one of those things" and move on.

Anyway - last Monday, my APA 9-ball team shot lights-out and swept our opponents 5-0 and point-wise 70 to 30. My match was actually the closest one of the night, with me winning by a single ball for a 12-8 win. That win propelled us from 5th place in the division standings to 1st. My Monday night team is a solid team - we've been together for over a year now and are gelling very well. Being in 5th place in the division was unusual for us; we finished last season in 1st and generally hang out in the top three spots.

Then... Wednesday... my APA 8-ball team (the one in which I recently took over as captain), ALSO won 5-0! Prior to the match, we were in 2nd place in the division by a couple of points and the team we were up against was the 1st place team... so the win gave us the lead in the division by a decent margin. It was a fantastic night - we all shot incredibly well - there was just no touching us. It was our put up for the fourth match and I put up our best player, a SL 7, more-or-less expecting them to match their best player up with him. They didn't. Being down 3-0 at that point, I guess they decided to mix things up a bit and put up a very solid (probably somewhat underrated) SL 4 hoping he could manage to pick off two games in the resulting 5-2 race. It was actually a smart move, but it didn't work out for them. Our 7 shut him down with solid play (with a heavy dose of defense) and won in 5 straight games.

The second part of their mismatch strategy meant that I'd be matched up against their best player. He was undefeated so far in the season... solidly in first place in the division's "Top Gun" rankings... and really a good shooter overall. Prior to that night, I'd never played him head-to-head but watched him play several times (obviously, the same went for him). He won the lag and broke dry. It was a so-so break - not really open, but not too bad. I nearly ran out. Getting shape on my last ball was a significant challenge, there was a fairly small window that I had to get to, but I nailed the position with a decent angle to break out 8-ball. Then... I missed the shot on the 6... rattled it in the corner pocket. I lost focus, probably thinking too much about the breakout (which I nailed) and not enough about the shot itself. Luckily, I got the table back before too much damage was done and was able to finish it off for the win... starting things off 1-0 with a decent "yeah, I'm here to play" statement. We then traded some games back and forth and I ended up winning before he could get to the hill. Very nice way to cap off a great night!

Then... THIS week. My Monday night team had a bye, so nothing to report there. Then, absolute disaster struck on Wednesday night, and we lost 0-5! WTF!? Our opponents were a solid team, but I wouldn't say any better than the team we played the previous week. It just seemed nothing was working for any of us. Yuck. Luckily, we were in first by a decent margin and the team that beat us was down far enough in the standings that they couldn't overtake us. Depending on how the other teams did, we might still be in first... or at least not too far out. A good wakeup call, and it came at a relatively harmless time... it wasn't during playoffs or a tournament or anything, and there's plenty of season left in which to recover.

I'm wondering if the Monday night bye was a factor? There's a lot of player overlap between the Monday night and Wednesday night teams. Maybe that broke our stride a bit.

On to next week!

PoolSynergy: Pool Channel Anyone?

2010-10-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

Twenty years ago, a cable TV entrepreneur named Joseph E. Gibbs began to pursue his vision of launching a 24-hour network channel dedicated solely to the game of golf. He teamed up with golf legend Arnold Palmer and a few years later, The Golf Channel was launched.

Today, Golf Channel continues to thrive... carried on numerous cable and satellite networks around the world. In subsequent years, other single-sport niche channels such as Tennis Channel and Speed joined the fray and seem to be doing OK as well. For this month's PoolSynergy post, I pose the question: "Would it make sense to create a cable/satellite channel dedicated to various billiards sports now or at some point in the future?"

Before I get started, I feel the need to give a disclaimer on this subject because I don't consider myself an authority by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not a cable exec, never have been, and never will be (unless someone wants to commission me to pursue this project). As such, you'll find far more questions than answers in this post. My only hope is that I'm able to stir the creative juices of someone in a position to nudge the idea along and make it a reality someday... or maybe someone who knows someone who can do that... or whatever.

Expanding on the previous paragraph, I'll further confess that I haven't been watching the business of billiards closely. I get a sense that it's struggling a bit as a whole (or at least I'm hearing that perception from others). I've heard about various problems with pro tournaments and tours and that Johnny Archer recently championed a new organization, the Association of Billiard Professionals, to address some of these issues. I've also noticed fewer and fewer billiards matches available on TV and have heard talk about contract(s) with ESPN either being lost or perhaps hanging by a thread.

So with all these problems or supposed problems, why do I think there might be a business case for a Billiards Channel? Good question. I freely admit that I'm applying more of a seat-of-the-pants or finger-in-the-wind feel for it, but I sense that a compelling case could be made. Billiards currently gets buried in the vast wilderness of ESPN, and historic matches are buried even further in the obscure ESPN Classic channel that I don't even receive (even though I get hundreds of channels and certainly don't have the cheapest package DirecTV offers... unfortunately, ESPN Classic is only offered on their most expensive 'everything' package - BOO, HISS!).

I believe a dedicated channel would go a long way towards giving the sport the coverage it deserves. I'm aware that there are some sources streaming on the Internet, and that's better than nothing... but really, I want to watch billiards on a big screen from a comfy couch.

Of course, any potential investor would want more than just my hunch to go on. Gibbs commissioned a Gallup Poll as part of his groundwork before diving too deeply into the Golf Channel, and I would expect anyone pursuing a Billiards Channel to do similar due diligence.

Again, not speaking as an authority, I see some basic needs that would have to be met to successfully sustain a niche network channel. First of all, is there an audience? I think so. There are certainly millions of billiards players out there and it's safe to say a good percentage of those players would be attracted to billiards-specific programming on a dedicated channel. It's more difficult to guess how many non-players would be attracted, but I'm sure there would be some. In this part of the analysis, it would be good to compare the number of active players to other sports already served by dedicated channels - are there as many billiards players as, say, tennis players? I think so. Golfers? Not sure, but possibly.

Is there enough content available to keep a channel rolling 24/7? Personally, I think this one is a resounding "yes." There are matches going on at various levels all the time worldwide - pro matches as well as certain amateur events would be fair game. Slices of the schedule could be dedicated to lesser-known billiard sports such as one pocket or three cushion... or even new ones like bonus ball. There's plenty of opportunity for regular shows (weekly or monthly, for example) focusing on various topics like technique, equipment, rules, etc. Shows like this, if done properly, could really help drive interest in the sport... which in turn would increase interest in the channel... which in turn, well, you get the picture (I hope). Additionally, there is a ton of historical footage available from various sources. Folks like Accu-Stats and TAR could certainly pitch their hats into the ring, offering up regular content supported by sponsors rather than (or in addition to) their current pay-per-view models. And yes, there can even be some trick shot coverage sprinkled in here and there (exhibitions as well as instruction).

Is billiards an interesting enough subject to support a 24/7 channel? For this one, I would draw a comparison to other niche sports channels. I like golf and have dabbled in it. I enjoy tennis and was on the high school tennis team. I've watched both of those sports on TV at one time or another. I personally think billiards is infinitely more interesting to watch than either golf or tennis. I can watch billiards for hours... I personally can't do that with golf or tennis. Am I the only one that feels this way? I doubt it. There once was a Fishing Channel, for crying out loud (I think it's morphed into a more generic Outdoors Channel). Is someone out there going to tell me it's more interesting watching a couple dudes sitting in a boat fishing than a couple of top competitors dueling it out on felt? Seriously?

Would there be enough sponsor support? I don't see this being a problem assuming the audience is there. There are several potential sponsors in the industry like equipment manufacturers and vendors, leagues, schools and so on but we need to keep in mind that the sponsors certainly don't all have to be in the industry. Pool is played (and watched) by human beings. Human beings consume food and beverages, watch movies, go on vacations, take medications, etc, etc, etc. In other words, most of the stuff advertised on other channels would apply to the people watching the billiards channel as well.

What type of infrastructure would have to be put in place? I'm not 100% sure on this one, to be honest. Again, drawing a comparison with the other niche sports channels, I think it's fair to say that it wouldn't be more complex than them. Hopefully it could be bootstrapped on a reasonable budget in the early going. I bet there's an opportunity out there to collaborate with an existing entity that already has something in place for another purpose (perhaps timeshare with another niche channel, or piggyback with a larger general purpose sports/news company). Logistics-wise, I don't think decent quality coverage of a pool match would be nearly as complicated as most other sports... it's not like you need twenty camera crews scattered all over a golf course or anything... all you really need to cover the basics is stationary cameras (unmanned, even) covering a few angles on the table and some decent lighting.

There are certainly other hurdles that would need to be cleared, but I think getting a handle on the audience, content, sponsors, and infrastructure are the biggest priorities. So who's up for it? Anyone?

Be sure to check out the other October PoolSynergy postings.

Bridge to Nowhere

2010-10-12T21:42:00.000-07:00

An opponent asked me how tall I was at a recent qualifier tournament. If I recall correctly, it was between shots while I was at the table... probably while I was chalking my stick. This opponent was someone I knew, but not extremely well - we don't play together on a team or even in the same league division or anything, but I do bump into him on occasion. He seems like a great guy, and a solid shooter - we've traded matches back and forth.

Anyway, it seemed like a pretty random but harmless question, so I just answered it factually and moved on to the next shot (or two). I knew he was asking me for a reason though, so curiosity eventually got the better of me and I asked him why he wanted to know. He explained that he noticed I gripped the butt of the cue further back than many of the better players he's observed... and suggested I check it out. I took the comment on board, thanked him, and continued on with the match.

My biggest initial concern was that my forearm may not be 90 degrees (or so) to the cue when I hit the cue ball, so I video taped myself shooting a few shots and concluded I was doing OK in that department.

I then decided to review the discussions of related fundamentals in some of my favorite 'basics' books. Capelle's Play Your Best Pool confirmed the 90 degree rule, Dr. Dave's The Illustrated Principles of Pool and Billiards stated that the forearm should be vertical upon contact with the cue ball (pretty much equivalent to the 90 degree rule), Martin & Reeves' The 99 Critical Shots in Pool talked about grip position in relation to the balance point of the stick (suggesting 4 to 7 inches behind the balance point). I recalled my opponent also making a reference to balance point... and I was indeed gripping past the 4 to 7 inch point, but I was reluctant to move my grip solely on this recommendation knowing that it would affect the 90 degree angle (which I felt was more important). Koehler's The Science of Pocket Billiards also talked about vertical arm, and then went on to say this about balance point: "Many instructors start by advising the student where to hold the stick in relation to the balance point. This means that the entire stance must accommodate this grip position. A better technique is to assume proper stance then grip the stick wherever the stance dictates." Since this statement was after the vertical arm discussion, I assumed the vertical arm was included as part of the 'proper stance' and this was more or less in agreement with what I saw in the videos of my shooting.

My opponent's observation was correct, nonetheless... the fact remained that I did tend to grip further back than many of the better players that were more or less my size, so I decided to dig a little deeper. Another factor that could affect my grip position (all other factors remaining equal) was bridge length. Think of it this way - if someone came up behind you while you were in your stance and slid your stick backwards or forwards through your fingers without moving any part of your body, it would change your bridge length and grip position by the same amount. Again, I went to the table and took a few shots... stopping periodically to measure my bridge length. Of course, it varied somewhat from shot to shot based on various factors... but I found that my bridge was consistently on the long side of the recommendation scale... it was generally in the range of 12" to 14".

This was not the first time I'd run across the "long bridge" observation. Back in the spring prior to participating in the APA Singles Nationals, I had a mentoring session with my league operator and he commented that my bridge length was longer than his. He didn't really press me to change it or anything, it was mostly just an observation at the time. I inherently knew from basic math/physics that a shorter bridge would give me better accuracy, so I made an effort to shorten it after hearing his comment.

In the booklet included with his E-Z Shot Cueball, Tom Simpson discusses bridge length as related to accuracy on the cue ball hit... stating that a 3/4" wobble at the back of the stick could cause a 1/4" error at the tip with a 14" bridge. He goes on to point out that an 8" bridge reduces the tip error by half, or 1/8", for the same amount of rear stick wobble. Based on this, he recommends the use of an 8" bridge unless some other factor in the shot dictates the use of a longer one.

Somewhat annoyed by my previous (failed) attempt at shortening my bridge length, I decided to be a bit more aggressive this time. I grabbed a ruler and Sharpie marker, measured 8" back from the tip of my shaft and marked it with the Sharpie. Now I have a good reminder that's "in my face" every time I get down on a shot. I made a dashed line rather than a solid thick line so it's not horribly obtrusive and/or distracting when I need to use a longer bridge... but it's definitely caught me a few times with 'normal' shots.

When NOT to ask about someone's equipment

2010-10-08T22:59:00.000-07:00

Being proud pool athletes, most of us like to talk about our equipment... but, yes, there are times when it's just plain not appropriate to ask!

This is a true story from earlier today! I was playing at a large tournament at the Riviera in Las Vegas (APA 9-ball Southwest Challenge). After a decisive win in the first round, I went to the restroom to ummm... well... do restroom stuff.

As I stood at a urinal with my cue case slung over my shoulder, an older gentlemen walked up to the urinal right next to me and proceeded to ask me what kind of stick I had.

That. Is. So. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

Never mind that he violated the first cardinal rule of urinal etiquette "Thou shalt not occupy a urinal immediately adjacent to an occupied urinal if space allows" as well as the second cardinal rule of urinal etiquette "Thou shalt not strike up a conversation with another urinal user especially if he is unknown to you."

I hereby nominate this incident for entry into Samm's next volume of You Might Be a D Player If (along with the camera dude incident from last weekend).

8-ball endgame

2010-10-07T19:35:00.000-07:00

Here's a situation I ran into about a month ago in league play, and I ended up blowing it. It was one of those times where a good solution just didn't come to me in the heat of the moment. I made what I thought might be a reasonable play and it turned out not to be - I left my opponent an open shot on his ball and as a result, I lost the game.

Interestingly, I saw someone else get handed pretty much the same exact situation at the APA Regionals in Phoenix last weekend... and he, like me, seemed to struggle a bit coming up with a good play. To his credit, he did better than I originally did and won the game.

An alterior motive for this entry is for me to go through the paces of recording & uploading a video from a new camera I got recently. It's one of those simple "shoot and share" type cameras that I mainly got so I could use it to evaluate myself during practice... but I think it'll also come in handy when I want to show a quick clip like I'm doing here.

Pardon me, sir... would you like to eat that camera?

2010-10-04T11:52:00.000-07:00

I hate to admit this, but I lost my cool during a match at Regionals over the weekend. Big time. Very possibly the most pissed-off I've ever been during a match.

After taking a loss earlier in the tournament, I battled my way up through the West side of the board and back over to the winner's bracket to find myself up against the guy that eliminated the person who sent me to the West side in the first place. He was a very tough competitor, probably the best I faced during the whole tournament.

Anyway, I got off to a good start and built up a decent lead. I was at the table with a fairly easy shot on the 7-ball, pretty much straight across the table into the side pocket... but it wasn't completely a walk in the park since the cue ball was on the rail forcing me to jack up a bit to get some stop for better shape on the 8. Other than that, it looked like I'd have a fairly easy run out.

I lined up, did a couple practice strokes... then, as I started my final stroke, I saw a bright orange flash out of the corner of my eye! I felt my body react - flinching mid-stroke, and I missed the shot. I looked over to find out what the source of the light was and saw that it came from some dude taking a picture with a camera phone. I don't think the light was supposed to be a flash per se, it wasn't a super-bright white flash... the geeky side of me thinks the light helps the camera focus in low-light situations, but the bottom line is it was directed right at me, bright enough to cause a distraction, and couldn't have come at a worse time!

I was absolutely livid, but fought back the urge to crack his skull with the butt of my cue (didn't want to take a chance at damaging the cue in the middle of an important tournament). I walked over to him and in a very reasonable tone said "that orange flash from your camera distracted me and very likely made me miss my shot."

And that's when I realized his clue train left the station some time ago. Instead of apologizing and immediately turning it off and putting it away like most sane human beings would do... he offered no apology whatsoever, made no motion to put it away and/or turn it off, and simply agreed with me that it could be annoying but he didn't know how to turn it off. He then proceeded to make some sort of "geeze buddy, it was only one shot" kind of remark and told me I'd probably still win. That's when I decided I needed to take a more direct approach.

I said, "No, you're not getting it. Put that camera away NOW. I don't want to see it again. Do not take any more pictures of me, period!" He reluctantly put it away, as if my request/demand was unreasonable. Meanwhile, my opponent was busy running out the remaining balls in that rack, so I also told camera-dude "that one missed shot cost me four points so far" and went to the table to rack the balls. My opponent broke, sinking a ball and ran two more before turning the table back to me. I felt compelled to give camera-dude an update "seven points now... but since those are points I should have had INSTEAD of him, it's really more like giving up double that, or fourteen points!"

Thankfully, I was able to get my head back in the game enough to win by a small margin. I went on to win the finals match as well... so I'm going to Vegas baby! OK, OK, I live in Vegas... but still, I'm headed to the APA 9-ball Shootout at the 2011 Singles Nationals!

Off to Arizona!

2010-09-30T20:09:00.000-07:00

I'm packing my bags to head down to the Phoenix area tomorrow where I'll be participating in an APA Regional tournament at Bullshooters over the weekend. The APA uses regional tournaments each Fall and Spring to feed into their annual National Championships. The winners of each tier at this tournament advance to the 2011 APA National Singles Championships next spring.

I was fortunate enough to participate in the 8-ball Classic at the 2010 APA Nationals earlier this year and would definitely love to repeat again next year (and the next year...). I'll be playing 9-ball this weekend; I unfortunately didn't qualify for 8-ball in the Fall Regionals. I've already qualified for both 8-ball and 9-ball in the Regionals next Spring, giving me a couple more chances to make the Nationals.

I just noticed fellow blogger Samm Diep rolled through Bullshooters last weekend with a victory, so I'm going to do my best to follow in her footsteps. Thanks for warming up the tables Samm! Her comments about Bullshooters posted earlier today couldn't have had better timing - I'm now looking forward to trying out the homemade beef jerky for sure... and probably the sliders... and the gyros. Mmmm, it doesn't sound like I'll go hungry!

Caroming to Regionals

2010-09-26T01:12:00.000-07:00

I qualified for the APA 8-ball Classic Spring Regionals today, after losing in the finals in previous qualifiers more times than I would have liked. The final match was a tough one - I wasn't shooting particularly well, and my opponent was a worthy one. I survived mostly on strategy and some reasonable safety play... but nevertheless, he was on the hill and I was playing catch up.

I don't think it was an intentional safety play, but my opponent left me in the position shown (layout is approximate - I doubt I have the angles right, just trying to get the general point across). We both had two balls remaining, his were in better position, I didn't have any decent offensive shots available and didn't really see any great defensive possibilities either (my best thought was to thin the 13-ball and leave the cue ball down on the end rail).

Anyway, given the overall situation, I decided to carom the 13 off the 7 and into the corner. I figured best case I'd make the 13 and worse case there was a decent chance the 13 would at least block the pocket... and the 7-ball would end up at the other end of the table. The complication with this carom (as if caroms aren't complicated in the first place) was that the 13 would have to make a fairly full hit on the 7 to get the proper angle which means most of its energy would be transferred to the 7. The 13 had a reasonable distance to go after the carom, so I knew I'd have to hit it firmly for the 13 to have enough energy to get to the pocket.

Well, I'm happy to say I ended up with the best case scenario. The 13 dropped, the 7 cleared, I was left with good shape on the 10, and had a fairly easy run out to get on the hill.

The final game was even uglier... lousy layout from the start, a massive cluster of stripes (my balls) along the long rail, and rolls simply weren't going my way. I was frustrated for sure, but stayed patient. My opponent put together a good run or two and before I knew it he was on the 8-ball and I still had all my balls on the table. Of course, that's not always a bad thing! I slowly but surely kept improving my position while waiting for a good run out opportunity. I hooked him very effectively at least three times on the 8, forcing him to kick at it and never really gave him a good shot. There was actually a point in the game that I wondered if I could win without sinking a single ball! Not wanting to push my luck, I finally started sinking some balls and ran all but two out and left him with yet another hook, forcing him to kick the length of the table (his 8-ball was on the short rail about a half-diamond away from the corner pocket).

He came up short on the kick, the cue ball rebounded off the near end rail and headed back towards the far corner with plenty of steam to get there on the fairly fast table. Then, he did something I doubt he'll ever do again. He scooped up the rolling cue ball and gave it to me. I looked at him in disbelief, and the referee (rightly) gave me the game. If a player is on the 8-ball and disturbs the path of the cue ball or the 8-ball in a losing situation, it's a loss of game.

To be honest, it was a lousy way to end an otherwise great match... but as I mentioned to the referee, the lesson at this level was far less costly than it would have been at regionals or even nationals. There are several qualifiers left, and I'm fairly sure my opponent will qualify in another one.

Aye Aye Captain

2010-09-22T01:09:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow night will be my first night as the captain of an APA 8-ball team. This Wednesday night team is the one I started with when I joined APA nearly two years ago now. We've had the same captain all along... but she and the team drifted apart over the past year or so, and last week she made the decision to pursue other opportunities. We had a short team meeting after the match, and I was elected captain. It's something new for me... so we begin another chapter in the pool 'career.'

I look forward to it, actually. I've played a lot of team sports over the years, so I'm very familiar with various team dynamics. We've got a really solid team that I think can be molded into a 'contender'. The evolution actually started awhile ago, and I think that's part of what caused some of the recent tension with the former captain. We took 3rd place in our division last session, and are currently in 1st place this session. In our recent tri-annual tournament, we lost a very close match to the team that went on to win the tournament.

My first order of business with the team was to find a couple more players to round out the roster since we only had six players after the captain left, and we're now into the fourth week of the session which is generally the last week players can be added to the roster. For that very reason, every other team in the city seemed to be scrambling for good players as well!

I managed to find a couple players that round out the roster very well, so I'm excited about the possibilities! Stay tuned!

PoolSynergy: What's Inside My Case and Why

2010-09-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

So I got home on a Friday night (after starting off the Fall APA season on a new 8-ball team with a nice win over a higher SL player, thankyouverymuch) to find a message in Facebook from some chic in Denver who wanted to check out my equipment...? I didn't even know her! Not only that, she wanted me to put it on display for the whole world - photographs, descriptions, the works!

Needless to say, I was thrilled and honored to get a note from Samm Diep @ The Tip Jar inviting me to join this month's PoolSynergy. I've long enjoyed PoolSynergy articles and look forward to reading them every month. It's a great way to bring the community of very talented pool bloggers together, and I'm happy to now be a part of it!

I must say our dear Samm picked one heck of a topic for my maiden voyage. With dozens of photographs to take and lots of writing to do, I knew I'd have my hands full to get it done on time. It's always fun to talk about your equipment though - and as usual, I did my best to weave in some nuggets of info I've picked up along the way. Be sure to check out all of the other authors contributing to this topic! Keep in mind you can click on any of the below images to get a closer look.

The Case

My case is pretty much your run-of-the-mill production case. I was running lean in the discretionary funds department when I bought it, so decent functionality on a budget was my primary concern. I chose a fairly basic 2x4 (two butts / four shafts) Joe Porper case that has a decent amount of additional storage, so it gets the job done nicely for me for now. By the way, I chose the green felt of my pool table as the background for this picture because I'm green with envy after seeing and hearing about Samm's new case. I'm predicting a Murnak outbreak after hearing some comments from other PoolSynergy bloggers.

The Cue
Like a master chef's knives or a samurai warrior's sword, a serious pool player's most prized possession is usually his cue; and so it is with mine. I'm not the type to go for a lot of 'flash' in my cue; I've chosen to spend my money on function and a solid balanced feel rather than fancy inlays and such so far. For my current cue, I had the opportunity to "try before buying" at the 2010 BCA Nationals. I'm very fortunate to live in the Las Vegas area, so it's easy for me to drop in on the major tournaments to watch the action and check out the exhibitors when they're in town even if I'm not directly involved. Being on a fairly tight budget, my ORIGINAL plan was to buy a low-deflection shaft for my existing cue, but I think we all know how original plans tend to work out. After trying several shafts and cues from different suppliers I ended up at the demo table in the Tiger booth. After shooting a rack or two with some Tiger cues, I came to the very logical and sane conclusion that I needed a new cue more than my kids needed back-to-school clothes. I settled on a limited edition model (TPC6) from the Tiger Professional Series. It had their X-Ultra shaft (which is what I mainly wanted to check out in the first place) and the Tiger Sniper tip, which I'd already been using for some time on previous cues. The cue also featured their Stack leather wrap - I really REALLY liked the feel of it, and still do. Sometimes the cue just seems like it's on autopilot, sinking ball after ball on its own.

Of course, solving one 'problem' sometimes creates another and so it was with my new cue purchase. I no longer had a spare shaft! Yeah, yeah, I know a lot of players out there survive just fine without a spare shaft, but I had grown accustomed to having one available with previous cues and my background in submarines and nuclear power firmly ingrained the value of redundant systems into my head. I honestly felt a little naked without it, and knew if I let it fester long enough I would have woken up in the middle of the night from some nightmare about having to finish a hill-hill finals match of some huge tournament with a wobbly bar cue because something went wrong with my tip or ferrule or shaft. I immediately checked my budget, and worked out how many lunches my kids would have to skip in order to pay for it... and at the last minute my girlfriend swooped in, wiped tears from their eyes, and offered to buy me a spare shaft for my birthday - yeah!

She said I'd have to help her with the details and that it obviously wouldn't be a surprise and so on, and of course I agreed to all of that. I gave her the relevant specs and told her who to call and so on. A couple of days later, she called me to explain that it wasn't so simple. She had talked to Tiger's President, Tony Kalamdaryan, and he explained to her that Tiger would be releasing brand new shafts and a new type of tip a week before my birthday - so I had more choices to make! After some discussion with the folks at Tiger, I decided to go with the new X-Pro shaft (fitted with their new Onyx tip). In my pictures, the X-Pro is shown on the left and the original X-Ultra with a Sniper tip is shown on the right. What really stood out to me on the X-Pro was the size of the ferrule - it's only 1/4" long! The X-Pro is also tapered differently, is thinner and therefore lighter than the X-Ultra. My cue weighs in at 18.2 oz. with the X-Pro shaft and 18.8 oz. with the original X-Ultra shaft. I've been using the X-Pro shaft as my primary shaft ever since I got it, and love it!

My girlfriend lied to me about the "it won't be a surprise" detail. I unwrapped it and went through all of the obligatory "thank-you-even-though-I-knew-what-it-was" motions... and proceeded to check it out as she smiled at me... I marveled at the tiny ferrule, checked out the new Onyx tip, the joint, the X-Pro logo engraved at the base... then rotated it to see "G-Shark" engraved on the side opposite the X-Pro logo! She had somehow convinced the awesome folks at Tiger to custom engrave the shaft with the nickname she had coined for me a few months prior. To be honest, I was a little amazed that she pulled that off!

And it gets better. A couple of months later, I again visited the Tiger booth (this time during the ACS Nationals) in search of a few minor odds and ends (mainly a joint protector for my new shaft). I was chatting casually with Tony, and happened to ask him if they had or were going to come out with joint protectors with the X-Pro logo on them. He began to explain to me that they decided to use a generic Tiger logo on all joint protectors because they were getting too many different shafts in their product line and it just wasn't cost effective to have so many logos... which made sense, of course. And then he shocked the heck out of me, stopping in mid-sentence to exclaim "hey, I know you... you're G-Shark!" and that's exactly what he wrote on my invoice when he filled it out.

To be honest, I tend to be pretty humble and I'm not entirely comfortable with the nickname at this point in my pool "career" but I'm warming up to it and it definitely gives me incentive to continue to improve my game as quickly as possible to grow into it. I admit it's a cute nickname, and I think I'm just going to have to get used to it... I get the feeling it's going to stick.

Break/Jump Cue

I played for several months before getting a break stick. Initially I used my regular cue for breaking, then decided that wasn't such a good idea so I borrowed break cues from teammates and/or used a house cue for breaking. This gave me the chance to experiment with a few different cues, but all of my friends and teammates subscribed to the heavy break cue school of thought and after reading various articles I discovered that there was an alternate school of thought for break cues.

This other school of thought, I discovered, was the use of a lightweight cue for breaking - the theory behind this is that you can accelerate the cue faster since it is lighter. I was intrigued by this approach, it seemed to make sense, and it also seemed to be fairly popular amongst the pros. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find anyone who had this type of break cue, and also wasn't able to find it in a physical store here in the Las Vegas area, and i didn't want to wait several months for the next major pool even to come to town.

After doing some brand research online, I took a leap of faith and ordered a Fury Jump/Break stick with a phenolic tip. It definitely took some getting used to - but once I got it dialed in I've been very happy with it. I'm generally able to get a lot of action on the break, dropping a ball (or often multiple balls) the majority of the time (I haven't tracked exact percentages - but as I write this, I'm thinking that would be a good thing to do). In the year or so that I've had this cue, I've sunk five balls on a 9-ball break on at least three occasions that I can recall (twice on a 7' Diamond table) and once at home on my oversize-8 table. I've dropped the 9-ball on the break numerous times, and have even managed to string together multiple 9-ball snappers on successive breaks on more than one occasion (as you can imagine, that can and has turned around a match in a hurry). As I mentioned earlier, my break stick is a light one, it's 17.7 oz. configured as a break cue and 8.7 oz. configured as a jump cue.

Jump cues are not allowed in APA play other than Masters so I don't use the cue as a jump cue very often, but I've practiced enough to be reasonably dangerous with it and have used it a few times in competition (with reasonable success, by the way). I personally don't think jump cues are a magic bullet and would rather spend much more practice time working on my kicking game... but on the other hand, I've noticed opponents treat you a little differently once they find out you have a jump cue and know how to use it.

I recall one recent handicapped tournament in particular where I was on the hill against a very good opponent (much better than me) and he was obviously frustrated with my level of play. I heard a friend tell him to play more safeties against me, and he did. I kicked my way out of a couple of them, but he persisted for a few innings and finally hooked me really well (for kick shots, anyway). I'm guessing his satisfaction turned into surprise when I, without hesitation or comment, configured my break stick for jumping and proceeded to make a nice jump, nearly sinking the object ball (rattled it in the pocket). I will now state for the record that I probably couldn't have shot it that well more than maybe two or three times out of ten... but he certainly didn't know that. I don't think anyone at that tournament had ever seen me jump or even knew that I had a jump cue... but there is no doubt in my mind that one shot changed his strategy for the rest of the match. It probably affected the strategy of some of my subsequent opponents in that tournament as well - word tends to get around. And yes, I beat him ;)

Tip Tools
Proper care of your cue tip is incredibly important - and like most serious players, I keep several tools dedicated to that purpose handy. Think of it, your cue's tip is what transfers everything you do to the cue ball. If your tip is screwed up, it really doesn't matter how beautiful your stroke is because it's not going to get properly transferred to the ball. Referring back to my master chef and his knives, I'll further point out that the best chefs are absolute fanatics about the quality of the edge on their knifes. Similarly, a top pool player (or one who wants to be) should be a fanatic about the shape and condition of their tip.

I've tried a few different tip shapers but the ones I've settled on is Willard's, which are the metal disks shown in the upper right and left of the picture. These come in different sizes for nickel and dime radius tips, and I have both sizes in my bag. I use the nickel shape on my break cue and the dime shape on X-Pro shaft.

While the Willard shaper also does a pretty good job of roughing up the tip (enabling it to hold chalk better), I also carry another popular tool called a Tip-Pik (shown in the picture below the shapers). As you can see, the Tip-Pik is a cylindrical tool with numerous sharp points at one end. Luckily, it comes with a cap to cover the points (I've got the tool propped up on the cap in the picture). Poking my cue tip with the Tip-Pik makes me think of aerating my lawn... again, the effect is that the tip is roughed up a bit and able to hold more chalk.

Shaft Smoother & Burnisher
A smooth shaft goes a long way towards a smooth stroke, improving both your accuracy and speed control. This Tiger Shaft Smoother and Burnisher is the handiest tool I've found for putting the final touches on my shafts and/or addressing rough spots as you feel them in a game. It's got two sides, the red side is coarser and the white side is for the final finish. I tend to touch up the finish on my shaft regularly, every few matches or so. Of course, it should go without saying to be nice to your shaft in the first place! Tapping your shaft on the edge of the table after a bad shot or knocking your cue over is a good way to put a dent or nick on it, yet I see people doing it all the time.

Talc Bag
No, this did not fall out of a blond celebrity's Coach purse on the Las Vegas Strip... it's a talc bag, and although I don't need to use it very often in the dry air of Vegas, it's handy to have "just in case." I prefer a bag like this over the bottle of powder I used to carry in my bag. The bottles tend to be messy... leaking in the bag as well as spilling all over the place when applying the powder. With one of these bags, all you do is rub it on your hand a bit to apply the powder. It comes in a zip lock bag, so no mess in your gear bag.

Shooting Glove
As you can see in my picture and may have read in previous posts, I used to use a shooting glove. As mentioned more recently, I've reverted back to my wild commando ways of shooting without a glove. So far I'm liking it, but I still keep a glove in my bag for the time being just in case. As recently as a week or two ago I had two gloves in my bag, so progress is definitely being made.

Extra Chalk
You can't see it in the picture, but I swear these little cubes of chalk have feet on them! I'm constantly replenishing my supply. At least chalk is cheap. Related, I've cycled through a couple different types of chalk holders but haven't really found one I like. I normally use whatever is available on the table if it's decent, but always have some available in my bag as well just in case there isn't any on the table or I don't like what's there (I really dislike it when the hole gets too deep).

Pocket Marker
In the APA league, 8-ball rules require that you physically mark the pocket with something rather than just call it. Obviously, that's not such a bad idea as it reduces the chance of contention over whether the pocket was called or which pocket was called and so on. I've seen a lot of different things used for pocket markers - small toy figurines, patches, cell phones, cigarette packs, lighters, keys, it often tends to be whatever is in a person's pocket. I even saw a guy use a condom once (unused and still in the wrapper, thank goodness). I tended to be the "whatever is in my pocket" type, but was pleased to find a nice commemorative coin in my goody bag at the APA Singles Nationals and have been using that as a marker ever since (unless I forget to dig it out of my bag before my match).

Mechanical Bridge
I'm tall enough that I don't have to use a bridge very often on bar-sized tables, but the occasion rises at times and I'm not the type to shy away from using one if I need it. I've seen pros use them, and I figure if it's good enough for them it's good enough for me. Unfortunately some bars don't have bridges available, so I've found that it's a good idea to have a bridge head like this tucked away in your bag. It fits over the tip of another cue such as your break cue if you have one or a house cue. The one shown here is called a Moosehead for obvious reasons. I chose it because it has a lot of different options for cue placement that should handle just about any situation.

Cue Stick Holder
Many bars and even some pool halls do not have good places to put your pool cues, which results in sticks getting knocked over and so on. Referring back to my "fine instrument" comparison earlier in this article, bad things can happen when a cue gets knocked over - the shaft can get dinged, ferrule broken, whatever. To minimize this possibility and to present a bit more of a professional appearance, I pack a Q-Claw cue stick holder. I've seen and checked out several different styles of holders before settling on the Q-Claw and feel this one is one of the more versatile designs. It's heavily weighted and simply sits on top of the edge of the table, which to me is an advantage over the clamp types because there's so many different types of tables out there, The tops of some are too thick or otherwise shaped in such a way as to thwart clamping efforts. I've run into very few situations where the Q-Claw didn't work.

Rule Book
People never argue about rules, do they? Hard to believe I know, but I've run across a player or two who just doesn't quite have a handle on the way things are laid out in the rule book so I bring an abbreviated version along to help them out. I've considered bringing the full sized one, and may end up doing that one of these days, but the coverage in this one has been sufficient for most situations that have come up.

The Cry Towel

Useful for many, many things - sometimes for me to cry in after a match... hopefully more often to offer to my opponent after a match. Sometimes my hands or brow need to be wiped, sometimes the restroom is out of paper towels, who knows? I even used it as the background for the majority of pictures in this post. A towel is always a good thing to have.

For Emergency Use Only

When dealing with a really tough situation, it's nice to have my trusty pitching wedge handy. Settling into a good stance on the table can be a challenge though. It might seem easier after several drinks - but trust me, it's not. Beware of low hanging lights and ceiling fans. Most bars frown on the use of golf shoes on the tables, and be sure to replace all divots.

About the Three Foul Rule...

2010-09-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in a previous post, I fell prey to the three foul rule at a local 10-ball tournament a few months ago. I'm glad it happened when it did and in the manner it did, because it raised my awareness to the rule in general. It was a "learning experience" that really wasn't too harmful in the end... I won the overall match anyway, and ended up finishing in the money in that tournament. But any time I run across something "new" like that I do my best to learn from it.

The three foul rule wasn't entirely new to me. I was aware that it existed in some leagues and some formats but given that my (relatively short) pool career had been sheltered in a single league that did not enforce the three foul rule, I'd never really seen it in action. I breezed over it in the book(s) and at the time didn't appreciate that it could be used as a pretty deadly weapon. To his credit, my opponent exploited my naivety at the time with a very good play. There was a nice wall of balls that he hid behind and it didn't occur to me that the right answer was to just take a foul and blast the balls apart to reduce the possibility of a subsequent (fatal) foul.

Knowledge is power, of course, and I'm fairly sure the same thing won't happen to me again... at least in the same manner it happened last time.

I recently ran across an outstanding video showing the three foul rule in action. There is a ton of good knowledge throughout this short clip with both players showing aspects of three foul rule play as well as some very good and informative commentary. Enjoy...

8-ball Follow-in for the Win!

2010-09-05T13:38:00.000-07:00

I try to go to local bar tournaments when I can find the time. It's an excellent way to practice in a competitive environment against players I wouldn't ordinarily come up against in league play. Until last night, I normally ended up at my original league home bar The Brewery on Saturday nights (7PM) for their tournament when I had time available.

Unfortunately, during this time of year, The Brewery hosts Fantasy Football draft parties that preempt their regular pool tournament. As you can imagine, it's a big disappointment to show up at the scheduled time, pool gear in hand, to see the tables covered and a bunch of Fantasy Football paraphernalia scattered about. In fairness to The Brewery, they sent out an email about the tournament being canceled... but the email looked a lot like the usual email I get every week about the tournament so I didn't look at it closely enough.

Anyway, as I was standing there looking at the covered tables with tears welling up in my eyes (not really), I got a text message from my friend Jim that said "looks like the Brewery tournament is a no-go tonight"... and I actually glanced around the bar to see if he was standing there laughing at me. He wasn't, but I guess we just missed each other because he had been there a few minutes before. He was headed over to another nearby pool hall Mickey's Cues & Brews to see if anything was going on over there. In the midst of a flurry of texts back and forth I remembered that another nearby bar, The Gin Mill, had a Saturday night tournament (not sure if they have a website, Google just sent me to smokinghotwaitress.com, and I'm not going to use that link).

I've actually never been to The Gin Mill even though it's in my part of town. I see the name of the bar coming up time and time again as the sponsor for some very successful local teams so I knew I'd be up against good players, which is exactly what I wanted. The regular players there strike me as a very tight knit group of people. I've even been told in the past not to bother trying to go to their tournament because they were cliquey and didn't welcome 'outsiders.' Whatever. I just wanted to play pool. Although I wouldn't say that I'm really good friends with any of the regulars there, I knew several of them and they knew me so I figured I'd be fine and was actually looking forward to something new.

The Gin Mill's Saturday tournament starts at 8PM and is a full double-elimination bracket. They play unhandicapped 8-ball following TAP rules. Each match is a do or die race to one, which keeps things rolling quickly and you get to watch a good variety of players in a short period of time. I shot fairly well in the early going, working my way up through the winner's bracket for a few games... then lost a tough one when the table layout was very much in the other player's favor... and then my aim decided to go to bed for the last match - I missed a couple fairly easy shots that I simply shouldn't have missed and given that I was up against a very good player by that point in the bracket, the mistakes were fatal. I ended up in the 5th/6th position - one level out of the money, which I was pleased with, given the quality of players in the board. It was a good night, and I imagine I'll be back from time-to-time.

By now, I'm sure you're all wondering about the title of this post - it relates to one of my earlier victories in the tournament. I didn't get the shape on the 8-ball I had hoped for, and was faced with a dilemma. My best available shot was a cut shot into a corner pocket. The problem, as you can see in the diagram, was that my opponent's last ball also occupied the same corner pocket. I considered the long bank, but the angle was a tough one and it seemed like a double-kiss was likely. I felt any other shot would have had even lower odds.

My shot on the 8-ball, more or less (click to enlarge)

So I lined up for a cut shot into the occupied corner and called that pocket. My opponent's ball was slightly off to the side in the pocket, but not far enough that I could have made it cleanly past the ball even if I had the luxury of being able to line up and aim a straight-in shot so I knew her ball would likely drop first... then if all went well, the 8-ball would follow it in. If things didn't work as planned, my opponent would almost surely be left with an easy shot on the 8-ball for the win. No pressure there, eh?

For those of you who have tried this type of shot, you know it's a finicky finesse shot. There's a lot that can go wrong - the aim and speed have to be just right. The physics behind the shot relies on the forward momentum of a rolling ball to carry it into the pocket after the initial impact with the blocking ball. If the aim is off, the rolling follow may take your ball into the rail rather than the pocket. If your ball is skidding instead of rolling, it won't follow. I had enough distance between my object ball and the pocket to know that I'd have a rolling ball unless I did something really stupid. Beyond the basic rolling ball requirement, speed in general is fairly critical too - if you don't have enough speed, you won't have enough forward momentum to carry the ball into the pocket. If you have too much speed, your object ball will bounce back slightly upon impact... which means your object ball would have to roll forward even further to make the pocket. This initial 'bounce' also tends to further complicate any errors in aim. In sum, it's a difficult shot to reliably pull off even if you're shooting it straight in... and I was going to attempt it with about a 50 degree cut shot.

Yeah, pretty much everything in the previous paragraph was going through my head prior to the shot - over and over. Damn brain is noisy sometimes. I've gotten better about turning off the conscious chatter and letting the sub-conscious take over once I'm down on the shot though. I took aim, stroked, and watched as my opponent's ball dropped... then after a very slight dramatic pause, my 8-ball dropped for the win. What happened next was, frankly, a surprise to me... the vast majority of the crowd at the bar erupted in cheer. I had no idea that many people were watching the shot or even cared that much, but it always feels good to get such an acknowledgment when a difficult shot goes according to plan. That's one thing I learned about The Gin Mill crowd that night, they were there to play for sure... but like me, they were there to watch good pool as well... even if it's an "outsider" making the shot against one of the local favorites.

Dr. Laura on Pool

2010-09-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

This article in Michael Reddick's Angle of Reflection blog (which in turn, references a post in p00lriah's blog) mentions a post about pool in Dr. Laura Schlessinger's blog. *whew*

The post caught my eye because I'm fairly familiar with Dr. Laura... there was a period of time several years ago that I listened to her on the radio every once in awhile because her show was carried on a station I listened to when I lived in Colorado Springs. She doesn't pull any punches, and tells people what (she feels) they need to hear even though it might be painful to hear it. The truth hurts sometimes.

Anyway, I enjoyed her perspective on pool and thought I'd point it out.

I hear she's retiring soon, maybe we'll see her on the pro tour? Or maybe not.

APA Team Nationals Wrap Up

2010-08-29T14:16:00.000-07:00

Thousands of APA players are headed home this weekend after a very full week of tournament play at the 2010 Team National Championships. Although I didn't participate in any of the marquee team events this year, I made several trips to the Riviera to check out exhibitor booths, watch the action, and participate in a few Mini Mania tournaments.

I did my best to keep an eye out for Las Vegas teams and saw a few here and there, but honestly lost track of most of them amongst the hundreds and hundreds of teams in the various events. I wish there was some sort of regionally based listing we could refer to that list all the Las Vegas teams (for example), their current status, and the time of their next match... but I guess maintaining something like that might be a pretty big task (although I bet an enterprising programmer could build it into the APA's tournament management software pretty easily, since team numbers and member numbers appear to be regionally encoded).

Vinnie and Jim discussing strategy during a time out.

Anyway, one of the teams I was able to follow fairly closely was an 8-ball team from Las Vegas called "Vinnie and the Youtes." Two of the members on this team, Vince Ciano (capt) and Jim Tellier, are on my APA Masters team... and Jim is also a co-worker in the 'real world' so I kept in touch with them and cheered them on as much as I could. They did a fantastic job wading through the sea of 732 teams to make it to the "sweet sixteen," only to lose a heart breaker of a match in sudden death.

Taking 9th place in this tournament is a huge accomplishment, and something they should all be proud of for sure! The team that beat them ended up taking 3rd place, and they were in turn beaten by the team that took 1st. Well done!

Shooting Naked

2010-08-24T00:26:00.000-07:00

I shot naked last night, for the first time in over a year... and I did it at a Mini-Mania tourney at the APA Team Nationals amongst thousands of other pool players. And no, I didn't get arrested. I'm talking about shooting without a glove, of course.

I started shooting with a glove a little over a year ago. I was shooting with a fairly inexpensive Cuetec cue at the time... not one of their high-end models or anything, just a standard run-of-the-mill mass-produced one. While I don't recall the details of the shaft construction on that one, it's obvious that the shaft is sheathed with something... a fiberglass-like material, I believe. They advertise the design as reducing warpage and so-on and I will say it's a decent cue (it took me to APA Singles Nationals, so it can't be all bad). I never really liked the feel of the stroke against my skin though... I had to use quite a bit of powder, and then found it all getting gummy on me in fairly short order.

I noticed several teammates and others in the league were using gloves, so I decided to give it a try. I liked it for the most part... it certainly solved the smooth stroke / powder / gummy situations. I used a glove for quite awhile, even after I got my new Tiger cue a few months ago.

Recently, however, I've been doing some drills intended to work on my stroking... trying to get a nice smooth stroke in general, and also trying to improve my fine speed control. It was during those exercises that I realized I was giving up something wearing the glove... I didn't have the full 'feel' of the shaft sliding across my fingers, and I believe it makes a difference! Taking the glove off made me much more sensitive to minute changes in the speed and direction of my stroke, allowing me to fine tune things to the point that I was performing the drills better without question!

So, if you're using a glove "just because" - put some thought into why... if you're shooting with some sort of composite shaft like I was, maybe it is the best overall solution for you... but if you have a silky-smooth maple shaft, try taking the condom off and experience the feel of the shaft sliding between your bare fingers - you might like it! Try some fine speed control drills with and without the glove and see if you notice a difference like I did. To me, it really was pretty dramatic.

Re: Epilogue

2010-08-19T23:00:00.000-07:00

OK, regarding the epilogue in my previous post... I looked it up in the APA Team Manual and the other team DOES have to demonstrate the ability to field a 23 team with players on the roster, not necessarily players present at the match. The other team did have a SL 3 player on the roster who did not make it to the match and they would have been able to stay under 23 with him. It was a moot point anyway since we won, but they were fine by the rules as well.

Playoffs!

2010-08-18T23:57:00.000-07:00

It's APA playoff season, and I must say I've had a couple of good weeks! I love it when things come together and seem to peak towards the end of a season.

As I think I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm on three APA teams: 9-ball on Monday nights, 8-ball on Wednesday nights, and Masters on Sunday. All three teams made the playoffs. OK, it wasn't exactly a big deal in Masters since there are only four Masters teams in the division so we all made the playoffs. And speaking of Masters, we didn't fare all that well - despite hanging at or near the top of the rankings during the majority of the season, we took a bit of a tumble toward the end and ended up in 3rd.

Monday night was a different story. My 9-ball team has really come into its own... it feels like family, and we really work together well. In the first week of playoffs, I found myself in fairly good shape in the 'cleanup' position... the last match. I didn't have to actually win the match for us to win overall, but I did have to score a non-trivial number of points. The heat was on, and it was mine to lose! I started out a little shaky to be honest, and found myself in a rapidly deepening hole. I was able to pull things together in time, though, and mounted a nice comeback to score the needed number of points - yeah! - on to the next round of playoffs, playing for first!

Our captain chose to lead off with me in the championship match. We were playing a very familiar team, one who had beaten us just a few weeks prior. My opponent was a solid one who I've played before. I don't recall the outcome of the previous matches (this was before the point I started keeping track)... but my sense was that we were pretty well matched. And we seemed to be during the first rack... we both jockeyed a bit for position and got our feet under us, shaking off the jitters inherent during the first game of a championship match. I was slightly ahead after the first rack, sunk the 9-ball and set up for the break. I had a nice solid break, sinking three balls... and darn near ran the rack. I wasn't able to get very good shape on the 8-ball, so I played it on the safe side and left him a tough shot. He missed, and I completed the run out... taking all 10 points on that rack! I kept rolling fairly well, and ended up with a 17-3 victory to start us off. Our next two players also won by good margins which left us in decent position to put it away in the 4th match. They put up a SL 5 player, and we decided to put up a SL 3 player since she'd have to sink fewer balls for the same number of points. Like my match in the previous week... she didn't have to win, only had to sink enough balls to get the points. Difference was, this was in the 4th match instead of the 5th match of the night - we had the luxury of a very comfortable margin to work with! Our 3 played very well and darn near made it - she fell only ONE ball short. That left our cleanup player, a SL 6, with only one match point to make - 9 balls, not even a full rack. It was academic at that point, and we rolled to an easy victory to take first place in the division.

Wednesday night 8-ball didn't go quite as well. We lost the first week, so we ended up playing for third in the second week of playoffs. Week two started out UGLY. Our best two players went up first... and both lost to solid players with slightly lower SLs and therefore a bit of a handicap advantage. So we were down 2-0 and things were looking very grim. It was the other team's turn to put up a player, and they put up their highest ranked player... a 6... hoping to polish us off in three straight matches. Our captain gave me the call because, frankly, I was about all we had left who had much of a chance against this guy since we already burned our heavy hitters. I'm happy to report that I was having a GOOD night and quickly jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the 5-3 race - I was on the hill! He managed to battle back a bit to win a couple of very close games before I won 3-2. We were still in it - clawing to stay alive! We put up a solid SL 3 and they matched him with a SL 4. The momentum was on our side though, and we took the fourth match to tie things up at 2-2. There was trouble on the opposing bench at this point though... their aggregate SL was at 19 and all they had left in the house was a SL 5 so they had to forfeit the last game due to the 23 rule! We won the match to claim 3rd in the division!!

Epilogue: Thinking out loud here - somewhere bouncing around in the back of my mind is a clarification about the APA 23 rule specifically stating that a team needs to show the ability to field players adding up to 23. I remember a comment stating something along the lines of "you can't just win your first three games if you don't have the players present to round out the roster" or something to that effect. I'll see if I can remember where I saw that and dig it up.

Hindsight

2010-08-08T19:39:00.000-07:00

I participated in a smallish local unhandicapped tournament last night. I was playing well, and found myself in a semi-final match against a very good player (rated significantly higher than me). In this tournament, the matches were 8-ball race to two on the winner's side of the bracket and 9-ball race to two on the one-loss side of the bracket.

Anyway, we each won a match and were hill-hill. He was on the 8 and I was at the table with two balls left. He had played a so-so safety and left me with a long shot on only one of my balls from near the rail. I had a tough cut on my object ball, but the long bank seemed to be close to dead on. Further, I realized I'd leave the cue ball in a safe position if I played a stop shot on the bank... so even if I missed it, I should be safe. It seemed like a good way to go, so I went for it. Unfortunately, I didn't put a lot of thought into the "what might go wrong" part. It requires a firm stroke to execute an effective stop shot at that distance (probably close to 5 feet). You also have to hit it dead-on (or at least close). Missing the dead-on part of the equation with a firm stroke tends to get real ugly in a hurry, and that's exactly what happened. I missed the shot and lost control of the cue ball and, of course, it ended up in good position for his shot on the 8-ball.

In hindsight, I did have a much safer, higher percentage defensive shot available... and that's the way I should have gone. I saw the possibility at the time, but dismissed it in favor of the more risky, more aggressive offensive/defense shot and paid the price.

One of these days I'll learn... hopefully ;)

Powerful Pool

2010-08-06T21:49:00.000-07:00

A new set of DVDs arrived on my front porch last week - Max Eberle's Powerful Pool (also available through Amazon). As you may recall I dove into Dr. Dave's VEPS a month or so ago, so I guess I've been in the mood for DVDs lately.

I like Powerful Pool a lot, and plan to watch it over and over again for awhile... and probably circle back to it from time to time as a refresher after that. In this set of three DVDs, the accomplished Eberle works his way through the most important fundamentals of pool such as stance, bridge, stroke, and aim. His casual and easy-going style makes this a very approachable and watchable set of DVDs for pretty much anyone interested in improving upon their pool fundamentals. Max takes things a bit beyond the pool table, even making a field trip out to his backyard to draw a few very interesting and appropriate parallels between pool and other sports.

I believe Powerful Pool is well suited for beginner and intermediate players, as well as probably more advanced players than they are willing to admit. While observing a local APA league player who happens to be a skill level 6 in 8-ball, my girlfriend leaned over to me and commented "this guy does just about everything Max said not to do in his DVDs." Of course, having just watched Powerful Pool with her the day before, I was thinking the exact same thing! While the player in question survives fairly well at SL 6, he tends to be very inconsistent in his play and has probably peaked some time ago. He and I have traded matches during unhandicapped APA Master's play, so even though he's currently a higher SL than I am, I've beaten him and quite soundly at that.

It's tough to compare Powerful Pool to VEPS. I don't really feel they compete with each other at all. They are completely different animals. As I mentioned earlier, Powerful Pool focuses primarily on body-centric mechanics that apply to just about every shot in pool in an easy-to-watch format whereas VEPS concentrates more on specific shots and related physics in a format intended to be digested little by little (with liberal use of the pause and rewind buttons on your remote). In my opinion, the two DVD sets complement each other well, and both belong in any serious pool player's library.

Know Thy Opponent

2010-07-30T00:16:00.000-07:00

Quick question: How many of you keep notes on your opponents? I mean, actual no-kidding written notes that are reasonably detailed? I'm guessing most of you haven't even considered it. If so, you're missing out on what could be a huge advantage. You probably run into the same players on a fairly regular basis in local league and tournament play, right?

Pro athletes in several sport disciplines have access to and take full advantage of extensive notes about their opponents. Granted, in those arenas the notes are likely compiled by someone else - a coach or other designated person. You can bet that every serious football team knows the tendencies of their opposing teams in various situations - what play they're likely to run, who will most likely carry the ball, who will most likely get a pass thrown to them, what defense they'll line up with in a given situation, and so on. This is common even at the high school level and lower. In baseball, particularly pro baseball, a batter likely has access to the entire history of pitches thrown to him by any given pitcher. The history is done in agonizing detail... pitch-by-pitch; the type of pitch, the speed, position in the strike zone (or out of the zone), and ultimate result of each at bat.

Why is this done? For competitive advantage, of course. Knowing the strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies of your opponent will undoubtedly give you an advantage if you're able to exploit them. Would you play a particular person differently if you knew that they weren't very good at kick shots or bank shots for example? Would you approach safeties or push outs against a given opponent if you knew they had an effective jump shot? Of course you would. Would you rack the first 9-ball rack differently if you already knew your opponent tended to break from the left side? Yep.

About a month ago, I was talking casually to a strong player between matches at a tournament. He pointed to a woman across the room and asked if I had ever played her, and I replied that I had seen her play but hadn't actually played against her yet. He then told me that he had a league match against her a couple nights prior and that she was a fairly strong player... but a couple of games into the match he discovered that she was uncharacteristically weak at bank shots (given her skill level) and he used that knowledge to beat her. As luck would have it, I found myself matched up against her in a tournament less than a week later - and that same nugget of information helped me beat her as well!

That was the 'tipping point' for me. I realized how valuable such information would be if I kept track of it in an organized manner rather than trying to rely on memory. Although I see the same players on a fairly regular basis around Las Vegas, I typically won't play most of them more often than once a month or at least every few weeks due to normal rotation. Consequently, I didn't really remember useful details. Sure, I might remember the basics such as whether I beat them or whether they're a strong player or whatever. But useful details that I could exploit? Nope. Poof, gone from memory. So now I'm writing them down and you should too. The more info the better. The date, the time, the occasion, your skill level and their skill level at the time, the outcome of the match (actual score, number of innings, number of defensive shots, etc, etc) as well as any perceived strengths and weaknesses. Do they have a strong break? Where do they break from? Do they avoid side pockets more than they should? Do they tend to get rattled if they're behind? If you think it might be useful, write it down. Even if you don't, and it's a legitimate data point, write it down anyway because trends are important and you might discover something important about those data points down the road.

Keep the notes in a format and medium that makes sense to you. A small notepad might work, for example. I use my smart phone (an iPhone). If you feel really ambitious, it doesn't hurt to keep notes on other players you watch as well even if you aren't playing them... because you might play them at some point in the future.

The important thing is to get started. Make it a habit, and it'll become second nature before you know it.

Happy Birthday!

2010-07-15T19:23:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a few days so I wanted to get a quick note in here to outline what I've been up to since the 4th. It's amazing how time flies when you get busy, and I've certainly been that.

7/11 is my birthday - so part of the reason I've been AWOL was centered around that. I had some company in from out of town, and spent some quality time with them. Sunday morning, they dropped by to see me play my APA Masters match. I set their expectations a bit during dinner the night before, explaining that the Masters format was not handicapped, and that pretty much everyone in the Masters league had a higher skill level than I did, and that I was mainly there to learn and any games I won were icing on the cake... yada, yada.

We started with 8-ball, and after a few very close games I found myself down 4-1. You may recall that I've been in this exact same situation before, so it was familiar territory. I fared even better than last time though, and swept six straight 9-ball games to win the match 7-4! I won two of the games (in a row) by sinking the 9-ball on the break, so needless to say my opponent was a bit stunned by the time the dust settled.

Monday night was my normal (APA handicapped) 9-ball night, and I had a severe case of "aim-itis" where I was missing shots, even easy shots, by just a little bit. It was ugly, and it's extremely frustrating when it happens. Figuring this out and improving my consistency is top priority for me. When I figure it out, I'll share for sure! My leading theory at the moment is that it could be vision-related. I usually wear glasses during matches because the smoke in the bars irritates my eyes too much when I wear contacts. With glasses, I believe, there is better potential for parallax errors to be introduced into the aiming equation. I've been thinking more and more about getting lasik surgery lately, and the more I run into problems with my glasses, the sooner it's going to happen I think.

Wednesday night is my normal APA 8-ball night. I was put up against our division's "Top Gun". The Top Gun listing keeps track of the number of victories as well as the aggregated skill levels of the defeated opponents, so the person with the highest score typically has several victories against higher skill level opponents. This gentleman leads the category in our division by a comfortable margin; he's only lost one match all session. Well, after last night, he's lost two matches. After starting the match off with one of my worst lags ever, I buckled down to business to sweep him in straight games.

Wednesday night was the first I used my birthday present (a new Tiger X-Pro shaft with their new Onyx tip), and it definitely came through for me! I'll write more about it in the near future when I get a few more matches with it under my belt.

Happy 4th!

2010-07-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

Happy Fourth of July everyone! For the folks outside of the USA, the 4th of July is the day we celebrate our independence... the birth of our country. Sadly, it seems like we're losing a lot of that celebrated freedom these days - but this is a pool blog, not a political blog, so I'll stick to the subject at hand.

I haven't posted in a few days, and for good reason. I've been busy with a few personal things, but also received a package in the mail on Friday that also managed to eat up several hours of my time (in a good way!) The Video Encyclopedia of Pool Shots (VEPS) landed in my mailbox Friday afternoon! I got the full set of five DVDs and plan to write about individual DVDs in more detail in future posts, but the first step for me was to power my way through the whole set to get an overview of the content, and here are my initial impressions:

- Seeing the shots on video really adds a lot of value. Being an avid reader, I have to say I've already run across most of the information presented on these videos in excellent books like Byrne's Complete Book of Pool Shots: 350 Moves Every Player Should Know, The 99 Critical Shots in Pool: Everything You Need to Know to Learn and Master the Game (Other), and of course Dr. Dave's own The Illustrated Principles of Pool and Billiards - but seeing the shots actually play out on video adds a new dimension to learning that books simply can't provide.

- There is a TON of information packed into these DVDs. Not only does it add up to nearly 8 hours of video in itself, it's intentionally produced in a high density format designed to be paused, rewound, and replayed (over and over and over again!). It's like having your own personal pool instructor on call 24/7.

- I've seen and/or heard comments from others that they were skipping ahead over Disc I and/or Disc II to purchase Disc III+ presumably because they felt they had a handle on everything covered by Disc I (Basic Shot Making and Position). I'm guessing a good percentage of those folks are underestimating Disc I. The last few sections of that volume cover more advanced topics like combinations, caroms, and billiard shots... and I'll have to say I haven't run across many players particularly skilled in the carom and billiard departments, so those sections alone would probably be worth the price of admission for most people.

- The info can be put to immediate use. I was in an 8-ball tournament at an Independence Day party at a local bar and successfully executed a Ticky Shot (Disc 4, shot 553). I believe I was first introduced to Ticky shots in the Byrne book mentioned above and I've tried them with varying degrees of success in the past... but after recently seeing it on video, I feel I recognized the shot quicker and approached it with more confidence than in the past. I shot it as if it was no big deal, and nailed it. Later in another game, I managed to hook myself behind the opponent's ball along the long rail while trying to get position on the 8-ball. I was left with almost the EXACT situation covered by "The Plus System" (Disc 4, shot 507). The 8-ball was two diamonds from the corner pocket so I really didn't expect to sink it... but I decided to give the Plus System a go even though I had never practiced it and had only seen it twice on video (once while watching the DVD itself and once while watching the preview here). I lined up without hesitation, took the shot, and felt like a friggin' Efren genius getting a good hit on the ball from two rails - knowing that probably 99% of the folks in that room would have opted for a single rail kick with much less chance of sinking the 8-ball (we'll overlook the minor detail that 90% of the folks in the room wouldn't have gotten themselves hooked in the first place!). I didn't win the game... but it was a nice shot for sure and recognized as such by several of the seasoned spectators in attendance.

Now I need to squeeze some time into my schedule to go through these DVDs in more detail!

Big Weekend of Pool

2010-06-29T15:43:00.000-07:00

I spent most of Saturday (until 1 AM) playing a 10-ball tournament here in Las Vegas. The tournament was part of a local tour. Having never played 10-ball before, I mainly went for the experience and to see some of the very best players in Las Vegas. That said, imagine my surprise and delight to have a decent run and make it into the money - placing 7th/8th out of 51 of the best players in Vegas!

Even though I didn't join the tour until its fourth stop, that finish actually put me within striking distance of having enough points to make it into the final event at the end of the tour. I'm very glad I went and learned a lot just by watching some of the great players there. I even heard someone utter the infamous line "that wasn't so great of a run out, all of his shots were easy." I shot really well the first couple of matches, then struggled in the 3rd match against the person who eventually won the tournament (he was struggling too - it was an agonizing hill-hill match, to be honest). I then had a couple of decent wins on the one-loss side of the board to land me in my final resting place of 7th/8th.

As I always try to do, I came out of the tournament with a couple of "lessons learned"... one of the early matches was the first time I've ever lost a game to the "three foul rule" so I need to be more wary of that in the future. I'll give my opponent credit, it was a very good play on his part. I won the match against him anyway, so the lesson learned didn't cost me too much. My second "lesson learned" was to keep a better eye out for a shot on the money ball(s) when I get ball-in-hand. There were not one but two situations in matches on the one-loss side of the board where I had ball-in-hand and was actually lining up on a shot to sink the next object ball when I realized there was a reasonable combo on a money ball. Luckily, I caught each of them in time... and sunk both combos for wins. If I'm not mistaken, both of those wins were actually match wins rather than just game wins. Playing mostly APA 9-ball, I guess I'm used to playing for points rather than looking for the money ball. And since I've never played 10-ball, I'm definitely not used to looking for the 10-ball!

Last night, I had a great 9-ball match in APA league play. I was up against a higher skill level player whom I've played several times before. The two of us are very competitive, and we always seem to bring out each other's best games. I was shooting well, and managed to jump to a substantial lead. With only two points to go for the win, he missed a very tough thin rail cut shot on the 7-ball, which was about a diamond and a half away from the pocket on the head rail. He inched the 7-ball closer to the pocket for me, but it was still a tough angle (probably around 80 degrees) and a long shot... more than three-quarters of the table. I made the 7, but then watched the cue ball slowly roll the length of the table to its final resting place in the corner pocket for a scratch. Under the conditions, I'm not sure if there's much I could have done differently - I may not have made the shot if I took much speed off the cue ball; and given the thin cut, I didn't have many options as far as English goes. Anyway, my opponent seized the opportunity and pretty much ran three racks while I watched for an incredible come from behind victory. It's always disappointing for the "it ain't over til it's over" maxim to apply to the other guy, but I can't feel bad about forcing someone to play like a pro for three racks just to eek out a two-point victory. Kudos to him!

Welcome to the Zone!

2010-06-23T00:53:00.000-07:00

I've been shooting fairly well over the last month or so; really can't complain... but I also can't think of a time recently when I truly felt like I was "in the zone" or "in dead stroke" until Monday night. Things definitely felt different. Shots were dropping with little if any aiming or thought. Straight shots, cut shots, it didn't really matter. Sure, I missed a few here and there, but I'm talking about the ones that sunk and how easily they sunk! Shots that I normally take a little time to line up, etc. It all... just... worked. Banks didn't go so well, but I'll attirbute that to some crappy rails, and I quickly adjusted to that by avoiding banks if possible. I'm usually pretty good at banks, so it seemed a little odd that they weren't working when everything else was. Interestingly, my kick shots seemed to be on even though banks weren't. I successfully got myself out of a few hooks with good kicks - even a couple two-rail kicks!

So now I'm evaluating things a bit and wondering if my practice sessions are starting to settle into my muscle memory a bit more or if this is just a passing phase? Or perhaps I've stumbled across some sort of different level of consciousness that will be the key to the next level of success for me? I remember having such a watershed moment back in high school while playing football. Time will tell, I guess. Whatever it is, it definitely feels different and the results rock. It still seemed to be with me tonight during practice - we'll see how it goes tomorrow night for 8-ball.

Crazy Week!

2010-06-19T19:54:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a week full of pool! I played every single day/night except Friday and even then I took advantage of the lull in action to get a couple hours of drills in at home.

As I previously wrote, Sunday was the most demanding day of the week for me. Monday was a normal 9-ball league night where I was put up against a tough opponent who had recently been 'downgraded' in skill level (I seem to be bumping into that a lot lately). She shot very well and jumped out to a quick 9-1 lead on the first rack, but then I was able to chip away steadily at her lead to bring it down to the wire. She actually sunk the winning point when I still had two points left, but she also scratched on the shot giving me ball-in-hand and the victory. I dodged a bullet on that one!

Tuesday night I participated in APA qualifier boards for regional tournaments to be held in October. I made it to the finals in two 8-ball boards, but unfortunately lost both matches in close games. I managed to qualify in 9-ball though! This is a little surprising, because I consider 8-ball to be more my game than 9-ball... but it's good to "go with the flow" and go with whatever is working. This qualification will give me motivation and opportunity to improve my 9-ball game.

It's really not my intention to give you a blow-by-blow of my play every week, so I'll spare the details of the rest of the week other than to say our handicap advantage didn't carry us through the whole 9-ball doubles board this morning. We handily won our first match and were in the lead in the second match (only needed three points to win!) but hit a wall... we got hooked over and over again it seemed and the other team was able to put together a nice comeback. Very disappointing for us of course, but we really can't fault our play... I think we did well. Sometimes the rolls just don't go your way.

Take Care of Yourself!

2010-06-14T01:21:00.000-07:00

Loong tournament day today - singles qualifiers for APA Regionals (leading to Singles Nationals). I wasn't as prepared as I should have been; I seriously underestimated how long I would be there. I made it to finals in both 8-ball and 9-ball and lost the final matches on both.

My performance had significantly degraded by that point, and there's really no excuse for it. I simply let the qualifications slip though my fingers because I was hungry, thirsty, and plain worn out... all things that could have been prevented by keeping myself properly hydrated and eating at least something! I didn't really think about it until I went home and drank and drank and drank and realized how dehydrated I really was. I even had a bit of a headache by the time I got home. Keeping hydrated in particular is important in the dry desert environment of Las Vegas. If you allow yourself to get dehydrated, it DOES affect concentration and fine motor control. It's important to keep nutrients flowing for the same reason.

On 'big' tournament days, I usually bring along bottled water and protein bars to fall back on if I'm unable to get away to get something. I didn't take any supplies along this time and paid the price.

Skill Levels and Handicaps

2010-06-10T23:42:00.000-07:00

I had a very interesting and unusual 8-ball APA league match last night. My captain sent me up against a guy I'd played in the past and beaten, if I recall correctly... but the thing that got me was a comment my captain made as I went to the table, "by the way, he's a three now."

I thought to myself, "wait a minute... did she just say THREE?"

I casually wandered back to the score sheet and took and look and sure enough... a 3.

The last time I played him, he was a five and I was a three. I imagine he felt the handicap that night because he told me after the match that I wouldn't be a three much longer when he congratulated me. Now, the tables had surely turned with him being a SL 3 and me being a SL 4.

I saw him practicing prior to the match, and he sure seemed to be moving the ball well and making shots and so on... pretty much what I'd expect to see for someone in the SL 4, 5, or even 6 range. In other words, he didn't appear to be shooting like a three... he didn't seem to have a physical handicap like he might have if he had been in an accident or had a stroke or something. I knew this guy well enough to know that he didn't typically participate in tournaments or anything that would give him reason to try to manipulate his handicap and I also knew him well enough to think that he wasn't really the type to do that anyway. So curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to ask.

I asked casually, "Hey, weren't you a 5 last time we played?"

He responded in a soft tone, "yeah, I was."

"What happened?"

"I don't know, I've just been losing a lot lately... and I didn't play for a couple of months as well."

"You look like you're shooting pretty well to me... good luck!"

"Thanks, I'm trying to snap myself out of it."

He seemed genuine, and even a bit frustrated and low on confidence. I was still a bit baffled about the whole thing, but wasn't upset or anything. I couldn't think of a better match up for him - we had higher and lower skill level players available on our team, but a higher SL player would have faced an even tougher race and a lower SL player probably wouldn't have much of a chance of keeping up with him. I knew I had my work cut out for me, but I just decided to do my best and concentrate on my game if nothing else. I didn't have a high expectation of winning, to be honest... but not in a defeatist kind of way, if that makes sense.

He won the lag, broke, and nearly ran out. We were off to the races! I had a decent run of 5 balls or so, then rattled a pocket. He ran out and sunk the 8 to go on the hill in the 3-2 race. In game two he broke dry and I ran a few balls but realized the layout didn't support a run out, so I played a safety when the opportunity arose. It was an OK safety, but did leave him a bit of a shot. He made the shot, ran several, then missed. I ran a few more and missed. He got to the 8-ball first... and then scratched on the 8! I broke and game three was pretty similar to game two with both of us having decent runs and him beating me to the 8... then scratching again on the 8-ball to put me on the hill!!! I couldn't believe it... and neither of his scratches were something he could have done on purpose (in my opinion)... there were rails and ball deflections involved in both of them... it was crazy!

But in any case, I found myself on the hill and about to break... and seemed to have karma on my side. I went for an 8-ball break and got good movement on the 8, but it didn't drop. It was a good break spread-wise, and I dropped two stripes so I was hoping I could run out - the only real challenge was the 8 being frozen to a solid. I indeed ran out except for the 8... which I tried to break out during the run, but missed. So I played a quasi-safety to break out the 8 and put it in better position, figuring I'd probably get another turn due to the layout of his balls. I did get another turn, and blew it! Ugh. But I improved the position of the 8 in the process. I got a second shot at the 8 and sunk it, winning the match.

Four games... 9 total innings... I played two defensive shots and he played one - and I burned an extra inning on the 8 in the last game so it certainly wasn't a typical match against a SL 3!

It was one of the more bizarre situations I've had in a long time - but I didn't let it get to me, concentrated on my game, and ended up prevailing (with luck on my side for sure). As we've heard many times - it ain't over 'til it's over.

I guess in closing I have a chance to badmouth the APA handicap system but I won't. All in all, I think it's a good system and meets its goal of allowing so-so players to compete with better players and vice-versa. It's not a perfect system for sure, but I certainly don't have any brilliant ideas to make it better. I know from experience that the APA is very sensitive to the possibility of "sandbagging" - particularly at high-level tournaments. They do what they can to keep things fair, and I appreciate that.

I know for sure that I've been the beneficiary of a favorable handicap as well. As I've mentioned before, I do tend to be pretty inconsistent at times. As a result, I have been accused of sandbagging myself. I honestly have never ever tried to manipulate my handicap. I also don't try to second-guess the magical APA computer. In situations where I'm asked to declare my SL, I declare it as I know it to be in the computer. I play my game and play to win, period. Sometimes it goes well... sometimes it goes extremely well... and sometimes I stink it up big time. Next Saturday I'll be hitting another Team Nationals qualifier tournament (9-ball) with what should be an extremely favorable handicap... so we'll see how it goes.